Echoes (Redux)
by txtmstrjoe
Summary: This is the DEFINITIVE version of "Echoes," a retelling of events from "V:The Final Battle." Set right after L.A. resistance leader Juliet Parrish is captured, "Echoes (Redux)" follows her story and how it is interwoven with those of Mike Donovan and Diana. Each character's struggles finds echoes in the others' lives.
1. Prologue - Where am I?

**PROLOGUE **

You gasp as you wake up.

_Wha..? What's going on?_

You notice you're hyperventilating, gulping in air with greed. You feel as if your heart is about to burst out of your chest, radiating a dull ache and making every frenzied beat send a palpable echo in your ears like a jackhammer gone berserk.

_Try to relax._

You close your eyes, willing yourself to slow your breathing. You force yourself to inhale through your nostrils, then exhale much more slowly through your lips. You notice that the air has a bit of an odor and taste you can't identify.

It takes you more than a minute to feel like you've caught your breath, and when you finally do, you open your eyes again. That's when you realize everything you see seems to warp and distort. You look all around you, and some of the walls surrounding you seem to be changing colors – yellow to orange to white – in random patterns. You look directly in front of you, and you see a shape that, when you stare at it, seems to resolve into what looks like a shadowy reflection of yourself.

_Where am I?_

You don't remember how you got to where you are now. You also wonder why you're somehow on your feet if you've just woken up.

And that's when you realize to your horror you are almost completely naked. The only parts of you that aren't exposed are the bottoms of your feet, which you find are sheathed in a very thin, form-fitting material not too dissimilar from no-show socks.

Your instincts scream at you to try to run and hide, but you find it impossible to even move your feet from where they are planted. Panic attacks you, and you feel your heart rate spike again.

Your teeth then start to chatter, and your body goes into uncontrollable shivering tremors. A part of you understands the obvious: You're naked, so of course you're shivering.

But it's more than that.

_It's so cold in here._ You hear yourself whimper, not just from the coldness of this place you find yourself in, but at least just as much from the escalating humiliation, vulnerability and distress you feel.

You cross your arms in front of your chest, tucking your hands into your armpits. You can't believe how cold your skin is.

_How did this happen? _

_How did I get here?_

_Think. Concentrate._

So you try to piece together the puzzling kaleidoscope of shifting images of memories and thoughts and emotions and sensations flooding your mind.

The effort to do so tortures you with a burst of pain in your brain with each conscious attempt to think.

But even as you struggle to recall everything that has happened in the last few hours, random images of faces and places and colors and shapes coalesce and transition from clarity to inscrutability, shifting and merging into each other as the moments pass from one to the next. To your horror you have no control over the things you see in your mind's eye. As all these images pass before your mind's eye, everything you see is as vivid as it can be, even if you experience each individual image for just the briefest moment before it passes away and transforms into something else.

And as you see all these images, your mind is inundated with voices and sounds and noises. As if by instinct you know that everything you're now hearing are sounds that have left their residues in your memories, and now all of them are playing back for you to hear, individually and yet also all at once. It is both cacophonous noise all mushed together and a symphonic blending of sounds, with each part distinct and easy to separate from the rest. You wonder how this experience is even possible.

While you see and hear all these things, you feel your entire body come alive with sensation, as if every nerve was on overdrive, overloading your brain not just with sensory stimuli of the current moment, but even memories of physical sensations too.

Every cut that has made you bleed, every bruise that has ever left its mark on your being along with the tell-tale signals of pain, every touch you've given or received, every strain of effort your muscles have exerted, every taste that has ever passed your tongue, even every odor you've ever smelled – all of these that you can remember and others that you'd forgotten long ago come alive again in your mind, resonating through every part of you.

As you stand there, experiencing all this, you feel the weight of unseen eyes looking at you, watching you.

And you _hate_ the feeling.

So you close your eyes, as if doing so would shield you and render you invisible from those unseen eyes. As you do, even more images, sounds and sensations fill your head and come alive for you to re-live.

You see your fingers dig into the side of the face of a man dressed in red; you feel part of his skin give, and you hear the gasps of a crowd as you pull down and reveal the reptilian scales underneath. You don't know why, but reliving this experience gives you a flash of euphoria.

Then the euphoria gives way to a rush of fear as you find yourself in a fierce firefight, exchanging salvos with soldiers clad in red uniforms and ominous black helmets.

You feel your heart surge as you hear the crash of breaking glass, then a massive lurch as the vehicle you're in, an ambulance, leaps over a curb, and finally the noise of metal tearing and more glass shattering.

The next thing you know, your right cheek explodes in pain as it gets backhanded by a woman in a red uniform, and the taste of your own blood fills your mouth.

You then see a white wall right in front of you, and you feel your arms stretched high above your head, your wrists held tight by cuffs. You feel large, strong hands remove all of your clothes, then fingers push and twist deep inside the most intimate parts of you despite your every attempt to resist their entry, and finally a declaration that you're not hiding any contraband.

Then you feel the ice-cold spray of high-pressure jets of water pelting your skin like a million frigid needles drench every inch of you, after which you feel the sting of real pinpricks into your neck as someone you don't see presses something against your skin.

All these pieces of memories flash into your mind, all in just a couple of seconds.

You whimper again, not understanding what's happening. You just know that you're a prisoner of the moment, of every moment you're living, of every moment you've ever lived.

Indeed, the only coherent thing that you can understand right now is: You're afraid.

Afraid like you've never been.

Afraid because you are naked and vulnerable.

Afraid of what they'll do to you.

Afraid of what they're doing to you.

Afraid because you somehow know they can do whatever they want to you, even if you don't know what it is they are going to do to you.

Afraid of how much it's all going to hurt.

Afraid that you are going to die soon.

So you open your eyes and look up at the ceiling of the room you're standing in, your vision still warped and unclear, not really understanding anything beyond your own growing fear. You hug yourself tighter, your arms crisscrossed over your chest and your legs squeezed together in an attempt to preserve some dignity in the face of the humiliation brought on by your nakedness mixing in with this terror.

And then you hear a man's voice, with that distinctive Visitor trill, echo in your head.

"What is your name?"

You shut your eyes.

Something inside you tells you to ignore the voice.

And something else compels you to answer.

But you hear the voice and the question again.

"What is your name?"

You bite your lower lip, hold your breath, still not wanting to answer. You hear yourself moan, betraying a new, growing pain from somewhere behind your eyes as you try to resist the urge to answer.

Eventually, though, you have to breathe again.

When you do so, to your horror, you answer.

"Juliet Parrish."


	2. Chapter 1 - Waiting Up

**CHAPTER 1**

Mike Donovan sat on his small cot and glanced at his watch. The digits blinked "12:35."

It had been just around three hours since he and the Los Angeles resistance group returned to their headquarters after their biggest op yet. Somehow they'd managed to infiltrate the Los Angeles Medical Center and crash the Visitors' grand gala. Their leader, Juliet Parrish, unmasked the Visitors' Supreme Commander, John, and revealed the aliens' true reptilian nature in front of a global television audience.

However, in the mad scramble to escape the hospital, Juliet got separated from the rest of the group.

Right now, nobody knew where she was or what happened to her.

_Is she even alive? _Mike thought.

A small noise made him look up. Elias Taylor, one of the group's first-ever members, tiptoed through the doorway into Donovan's tiny quarters.

"Anything?" Mike asked.

Elias' frown spoke volumes. "The Bernsteins haven't seen nor heard from her. Neither have any of the other safehouses."

Mike rubbed his forehead. "I'll stay up and wait, just in case." He looked up at Elias. "You get some shut-eye."

"You sure? Why don't you nod off for a while. You look exhausted, man."

"I don't think I can get any sleep anyway." He closed his eyes. "Not after making that decision."

When Donovan opened his eyes again, he saw sympathy in Elias' eyes, and a tinge of guilt. Elias, along with Robert Maxwell, convinced him to leave Julie behind when she got separated from the main rebel group. She had decided to provide cover fire while the group made its planned escape up a deactivated elevator shaft.

"Look, man," Elias said, "it was the only call to make. Julie herself always said we can't sacrifice everything for just one person, no matter who it is – "

"I don't know," Mike said, unconvinced. "I just hate not knowing what happened to her."


	3. Chapter 2 - Surveillance

**CHAPTER 2**

"Radio check. Shadow to Eagle Eye, Shadow to Eagle Eye, do you copy?"

A figure clad in black pushed in his earpiece, adjusting it to hear the quiet voice coming through. "Solid copy, Shadow."

Some static crackled through. "0040 sit-rep."

"Looks like they're shutting down for the night."

Silence came through the earpiece before another burst of static. "That's a weird play. No sign of evac?"

"None that I can tell."

"These guys are amateurs!" said Shadow through Eagle Eye's earpiece.

"They are."

"Don't they know they're in danger?"

"No kidding. I'm sure you've already heard from Intel that LAPD's already given the lizards Pascal's info, that he's the most likely person to have made the forged passes."

"So it's only a matter of time before Pascal gets picked up."

"That's a safe bet. I mean, if these guys found him – "

"It's just a matter of time before the Visitors get to him."

More silence, then Shadow spoke again. "Why not just go down there, then, and let them know what's up?"

Eagle Eye was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he said, "No, we can't."

"Why not?"

"These people will shoot before they ask any questions, after what happened tonight."

"Hmm. I never thought of it like that," Shadow said. "I bet they're all jumpy."

"Wouldn't you be? We've got to let things play out, go according to plan. If their luck holds, we'll get to them before the lizards eventually do."

"What if," Shadow started to say, "what if the Visitors beat us to the punch?"

Eagle Eye thought about the question for a moment, then said, "Then I guess they're S.O.L., and we move on." He yawned. "You want to take this shift, or should I?"

"I'll take this shift. Sounds like you need the rest more than I do."

"OK. Wake-up call at 0200 hours. Then I'll take over."

"Sounds good, brother. Radio silence on your mark until 0200 hour wake-up call."

Eagle Eye looked at his watch, waiting for the next minute to start. As it did, he called, "Mark. Radio silence until 0200 hours. Eagle Eye out."


	4. Chapter 3 - Too Much To Do

**CHAPTER 3**

_A moment to rest._

_And to think._

Diana closed her eyes, trying to separate herself from the din and distraction of the universe as she reflected on the events of the last few hours. G-forces pushed and pulled on her as her personal shuttle climbed the night skies above Los Angeles on its way to the Mother Ship.

Her neck and lumbar muscles ached from the accumulation of stress, and the need to sleep threatened to pull her into its embrace, but she could not afford to rest just yet.

_Tonight was supposed to advance our mission and help ensure our Leader's ultimate victory over these humans._

_Instead, this failure may unravel everything we've done so far these last five months and doom our people to extinction._

A quiet electronic chime interrupted her reverie.

"We are on final approach," said her pilot through the craft's intercom.

"Very good."

She closed her eyes again, feeling the shuttle's subtle movements along multiple vectors as it maneuvered into her exclusive docking bay on the Mother Ship. Her hands tightened on the arms of her seat, impatient to disembark the craft.

_There is so much to do. _

It took a short minute for the shuttle to land, and as soon as the loading ramp touched the deck Diana strode out onto the docking bay. Her top assistant, Martin, was waiting for her.

"Give me a sit-rep," Diana said, walking past Martin without breaking stride, forcing him to catch up to her.

"The investigation of the communications systems failure at Master Control is still ongoing, but based on the evidence accumulated so far, it appears to have been caused by a random equipment failure."

"I find that hard to believe," Diana answered, still walking fast. "A specific system failure that occurs precisely at a critical moment, the manifestation of which removes our ability to terminate signal transmission to the entire network?"

"I know it's incredible, but that's what the evidence suggests. The failure point was determined to be one broken trace on one specific circuit board that was long overdue for prophylactic replacement."

"My instincts tell me sabotage was probable," Diana said.

"To be honest, I'm inclined to agree," replied Martin. "But there's no way to prove that, given the evidence."

Diana kept on walking. "Whatever the case, we do have bigger problems that need our attention. Where is John now?"

"In his suite. Cosmetics has repaired the damage to his synth-skin; he has advised me that he has retired for the night and left orders to not be disturbed until 0600 hours local."

"Unbelievable!" Diana seethed. "Our mission has had a critical blow dealt to it, and he sleeps?"

"My apologies, Diana," Martin said. "It's not my place to question the directives of the Supreme Commander."

"You are correct, of course," Diana backtracked, outwardly calmer now. "And what about the rest of the rebels captured at the medical center? At least we have most, if not all, of them in custody. That is the one thing that has gone right tonight."

She froze and looked behind her when Martin didn't answer. He was a few steps away, having stopped walking when she asked her last question. She couldn't read the look on his face.

"The rest of the rebels?" Martin asked. "I only know about the one – "

"But I heard the report myself. I was with Steven when it came in."

After a moment of silence, Martin said, "I'm sorry if I'm at a loss for words, Diana. I don't know what to tell you. We received no report of additional rebel prisoners taken at the Medical Center."

"Steven will answer for this," Diana said, not bothering to mask her ire any longer. She started walking again, quicker now than before.

Martin jogged after her to close the distance. His voice was deferential, almost apologetic, as he explained: "I'm sorry for all these problems. I will help redress them as much as I am able to."

"At least you seem to be as dedicated to our Leader and our mission as I am," Diana said. When he offered no response, she clarified. "You don't seem to care much for your own personal comfort either, not when there is so much work to be done."

"I only aim to do my duty as well as I possibly can," Martin answered.

"I know that about you, Martin. And I appreciate you for it."

They continued their walk through the corridors of the Mother Ship, ascending a few levels via elevator, until they stopped before a room flanked by a pair of guards. She waved her hand, and the guard on the right spun around and hit the switch to open the door for her.

Diana walked into an anteroom, with Martin a respectful distance behind. Diana waited for the door to close behind them before speaking again. Her voice was low as she spoke.

"I don't know who to trust. However, tonight's events has shown me who I _cannot_ trust."

She watched Martin process this revelation. "Well," he began to say, "I hope you know you can trust me."

"If I didn't trust you, we would not be having this conversation."

She smiled when Martin bowed his head, pleased he accepted her compliment. She stepped towards a door which led to yet another room. "Is there anything else to report?"

Martin bowed his head again. "Only one last detail. I had Bruce extract samples of the prisoner's genetic material as you ordered. The samples are waiting for you in your personal laboratory."

"Excellent. Thank you. I now must offer you my apologies. I've forgotten the hour, and you must be exhausted," Diana said. "I have asked much more from you tonight than I have from anybody else."

"It is my duty to serve as best as I can," Martin said. "If there will be nothing else, Diana, may I take my leave? I need to speak with Lorraine and Barbara."

"About?"

Martin eyes darted for a quick moment, then answered, "Well, I am presuming that the care for the rebel prisoner will be assigned to me and my section."

"I have yet to make any definitive decisions regarding that," Diana replied. "However, given what I know – that Steven and most of the Security command staff have proven themselves incompetent at best and negligent at worst – I suppose it is quite possible you and your staff will draw this assignment."

"Very well," Martin said, bowing his head. "Will you be staying here long?"

"No. I'm here just to get a situation update and for some preliminary observation. I'll be returning to the Medical Center fairly soon thereafter."

"You won't even take a short rest?"

"There's just too much to do," she said, "and time is of the essence."

"Will you need me to accompany you back to your shuttle?"

"That won't be necessary. Again, thank you. You have been most helpful."

Martin bowed his head again, then turned to leave the anteroom. Diana, on the other hand, stepped through the hatch into the inner room.

Three other Visitors – two men and one woman – were already in there, and all of them turned to greet Diana when she entered. She acknowledged all three with a nod.

Although it was mostly dark in there, Diana squinted as she looked through the transparent partition directly opposite the room's entrance. On the other side of the partition, awash in bright lights blinking off and on, was yet another room, inside which was a young human woman standing atop a raised platform.

The human was naked, her eyes closed and her head bent down. She slouched as she stood, with her arms crossed in front of her chest. Her hands were rubbing her biceps, and her obvious shivers and occasional moans of discomfort betrayed the coldness of the room.

Diana took her place in front of a computer console dominated by a pair of monitors. Her gaze was fixed on the human woman.

"Report," she said, her voice low.

Nelson, who stood to Diana's left, spoke. "We are still at the assimilation stage. The nano-transceiver units are all functioning perfectly. We are presently mapping her neural systems, which, as you know, takes some time to complete."

"Have you begun probing her?"

"She is exhibiting a very strong resistance to the truth serum, so interrogation has been slow. We've barely just begun extracting her identification and other biographical data." Nelson paused as he moved his hands on his console, switching to a data screen on his monitor. "Her name is Juliet Marie Parrish; age: 26 years old; occupation: student – engaged in post-graduate studies specializing in medicine and biochemistry at University of California, Los Angeles –"

"Biochemistry?" Diana interrupted, suddenly intrigued. "Have you found out if she has had any associations with members of the scientific community that we have already arrested, converted or eliminated?"

"Yes. Crosschecking her ongoing confessions with records from all the usual sources has revealed that she worked closely with one Dr. Rudolf Metz. We arrested him, implicated him as a member of the scientists' conspiracy, and then added him to the human food stocks nine weeks ago."

Diana frowned. "If she had been in league with this Dr. Metz, why didn't Security arrest her then?"

"Don't forget, she is still just a student. It's not a matter of policy that we arrest common students, even if they belong to a targeted group. Unless, of course, they have already demonstrated attitudes and activities against us. She is not a prominent bio-scientist as Dr. Metz was, and she has no criminal history. Until tonight she had been completely nondescript."

"I acknowledge this is just an indulgence in hindsight," Diana started to say, "but if Security had arrested her as well back then, then tonight's disaster at the medical center could have been avoided."

She stood in silent contemplation for a few moments, her eyes still fixed on the human the way a predator locks its gaze on its prey, then leaned towards Bruce, who manned the medical monitoring station to her right.

"How are her vital signs?" she asked.

"She is healthy enough to endure the process. However, deep-level scans have revealed the existence of a congenital heart condition." Bruce switched one of his monitors to display the relevant information.

Diana looked over to read the data. "A minor atrial septal defect is not especially dangerous. It's so insignificant it has never even been diagnosed, according to her medical records."

"Perhaps not," Bruce frowned. "However, with the rigors of the process, any physiological flaw, no matter how apparently insignificant, could become acute."

Diana continued reading the information displayed on Bruce's monitor. Something caught her attention. "What's this?" she asked, indicating a flashing marker on the screen.

Bruce clicked on the marker. "This part of her medical record appears to be cross-linked to a case filed with the New York Police Department."

"How curious," Diana said, when her chronometer chimed. "Send me a detailed summary of that police department file. I'll attend to it later; for now I must return to the medical center. Before I leave, however, what is your preliminary assessment?"

"It's still early, and we're still gathering data," he began to say, "but given even just the limited amount we know about her it is clear her history suggests she's going to be a very difficult subject."

Diana was thoughtful and silent for a few moments, then said, "I'll break her. She's going to be my masterpiece."


	5. Chapter 4 - Are We In Danger?

**CHAPTER 4**

This is Martin right now:

Your cadence is quick yet unhurried as you part ways with Diana. You barely acknowledge the sentries guarding the entrance of the room before you turn to your left.

Your mind is racing as you weigh the risks you've already taken, calculating just how many more risks you know you must take going forward given how things are.

_You're a professional soldier, with more than two decades' worth of battlefield experience_, you tell yourself. _You've seen people die, and you've made your fair share of kills in the Leader's name._

_So why are you so afraid right now?_

You enter an elevator and take it to the officers' quarters section of the Mother Ship. The ride takes you down a few levels, giving you more time for reflection.

_It's one thing to calculate risks when they impact just yourself._

_When those risks involve other people – many other people – then the equations change._

The doors slide open, and you step out. You turn again to your left, heading towards a cabin you've visited many times. It's not yours, but it's familiar to you given how often you visit.

You activate the intercom.

"Lorraine?" you ask quietly.

"Get in," she replies, even as the door into her quarters slides open.

You step inside quickly, and the door slides shut behind you. You see Lorraine standing by her desk, where the controls for the door to her cabin are.

"Are we secure?" you ask her.

"I've activated the protocol," Lorraine replies, referring to a specific recorded data loop feeding into the cabin's surveillance system. It was no secret among officers that there was no such thing as privacy aboard most Mother Ships.

"Thank the fates our movement has developed fully-effective countermeasures against our leadership's paranoia," you say.

"Indeed," Lorraine says.

You look at Lorraine, struggling for words.

"Well?" she finally asks.

"I've reported to Diana that what happened at Master Control tonight was an unfortunate yet completely random equipment failure."

"Did she accept that explanation?"

"Not completely. As you might have expected, she believes it was sabotage. She thinks the fact it occurred at precisely the worst possible moment means that it was unlikely to have been a coincidence."

Lorraine allowed herself a small smile. "Or the perfect time, depending on your point of view."

"Indeed." You pause for a moment. "I think you and I shall escape scrutiny for our roles in tonight's incident. Few things are certain, of course. But we have manipulated the situation as best we can."

"It certainly helps that you had assigned Barbara to head the forensics crew composed entirely of our people 'investigating' the incident."

You give her a wan smile. She looks back at you, her eyes eloquent with their betrayal of her unease.

"I don't understand," she says. "You don't look at all pleased."

"We are not out of danger. Not completely."

Lorraine's eyes widen, surprised. "I don't understand. I thought the operation was a success; the rebels unmasked John, and we arranged their escape."

"You obviously haven't heard. One of the rebels was captured."

"What? I thought the plan you and Donovan had come up with was foolproof!"

You slump your shoulders. "Clearly something we didn't anticipate happened."

"Who was captured?"

"No less than the leader of the local rebels."

"The leader? You mean the woman who unmasked John?"

"Yes," you say as you drop your gaze to your boots. "Juliet Parrish."

Lorraine is silent for a moment. "What does Diana intend to do with her?"

"I'd spent the better part of the last eighty three minutes preparing her for the conversion process." You are still staring at the floor. "It was a direct order from Diana herself."

Lorraine goes quiet again. "Do you know if this Juliet Parrish knows you? Have you met her before?"

Now it's your turn to be silent. "I am certain Donovan has told her about me, just as he had told me about her," you say after a few moments. "I don't know about the extent of her knowledge of me beyond knowing my name, but she and I have never met."

You pause for a long beat, trying to read Lorraine. You watch her tense up, struggling to keep her breathing steady. "I took every precaution I could. I stayed out of her view as the technicians undressed her and searched her for contraband. By the time she was implanted with the neural nano-transceivers, she had been drugged unconscious. I didn't take her to the conversion chamber either." You let the memories of all you did and saw wash over you. You feel Lorraine's unspoken hunger for more details, but the squeeze of shame and guilt prevents you from disclosing the details of everything you did. You sigh before speaking again. "I am sure she never saw my face, just in case Donovan had shown her my picture."

"Maybe we are exaggerating the danger?" Lorraine says, after a few moments of silent contemplation.

"All it will take is for Diana, or any of her staff, to ask her about any allies her group has, Visitor or human."

You see Lorraine slump. "Truth serum," she says with equal parts dread and dejection. "Can she resist it?"

"I doubt it."

"How well-versed are you with the conversion process?"

"Not at all. Diana has compartmentalized the staff who participate in the process; the crew of conversion specialists on our ship is small, composed of no more than nine people."

"Paranoia," Lorraine comments.

"Or the need for absolute control and secrecy," you offer, when a thought occurs to you. "I have to somehow find out who has been assigned to Juliet Parrish's conversion."

"What do you have in mind?"

"It occurs to me that we might – _might _– have one of our own people in position to at least keep us informed."

Something else enters your thoughts. "Did you know I _was_ almost involved in a prisoner's conversion, several months ago, albeit at just a peripheral level?"

"Oh?"

"When Donovan himself was captured. Diana interviewed him briefly; she originally wanted him executed, but I suggested Donovan might be useful as a convert. Diana first said she didn't want to bother, citing his likely stubbornness, but I appealed to her ego and challenged her. She finally agreed with my suggestion, which allowed our people the opportunity to smuggle him off the Mother Ship."

"I remember. Poor Barbara had to take a stun blast."

"I still feel very guilty for that, to be honest."

"She volunteered."

"She took a huge risk. At that point we did not know who Donovan was yet, much less his tendencies. He could have killed her, if he wanted to." You look down at the floor again. "I know we all take them, but I've never been comfortable when the risks I take for myself might involve other people as well."

You look at Lorraine, and you see concern in her expression. "That's the price of empathy," she says, smiling. "You can't change who you are."

"I fear that Diana might dispute that as well, particularly as it relates to Juliet Parrish."

Lorraine just looks at you, and you could tell that she understands exactly what you mean.


	6. Chapter 5 - Search and Seizure

**CHAPTER 5**

The shuttlecraft drifted down to the street in near-perfect silence. The streetlights gave the vehicle's gleaming white finish a pale yellow glow.

Although its descent was quieter than a whisper, the shuttle's propulsion system did make the air vibrate, and these subsonic vibrations caused every animal within a radius of one hundred and fifty meters to react. House pets and street vermin either barked or meowed or twittered or chirped, and those not enclosed within walls ran to escape the unnatural movements of the air.

Because of the curfew imposed on the entirety of the United States, there were no running vehicles in the residential area of Los Angeles called Echo Park. The shuttlecraft landed in the middle of the street, then lowered its port-side loading ramp.

A squad of a dozen Shock Troopers ran out of the shuttlecraft towards a bungalow on the east side of the street, while two other squads fanned out and created a perimeter around it. The leader of the first squad led his troops to the door.

With silent hand and arm gestures he directed one of his men to plant low-yield explosives on the door's hinges, then stood back as the charges' fuses were lit. A couple of small pops destroyed the hinges, and although the locks were still engaged the door was easily removed.

The squad leader moved his left hand, and six of his men rushed into the house.

A minute later the soldiers dragged out a man who looked to be in his late forties.

One of the men went to the squad leader.

"We have him in custody, sir."

"Do we have the right man?" the squad leader asked.

"It appears so," the Shock Trooper replied. "A cursory inspection of the residence reveals a large stock of specialized materiel and equipment for counterfeiting operations, sir."

The squad leader nodded, then stepped into the house. He found the light switch, then he removed his helmet. Although his visor was equipped with a night vision enhancement system, he preferred the soft yellow light that filled the room.

He walked through the house, and in one of the bedrooms he found an assortment of provisions and gear – printing presses, computers, magnetic strip analyzers, and other tools and pieces of equipment – that a modern counterfeiter would need.

He withdrew his communicator and opened the channel.

"I need an inspection team in here immediately."

"I'm sending one now, sir. What are they to search for?"

"I need evidence this Dan Pascal helped the rebels infiltrate the medical center tonight, as well as perhaps any information leading to the location of their headquarters."

"As you wish, sir."

"Very good. Brian out."


	7. Chapter 6 - Stress on the Job

**CHAPTER 6**

"We Visitors are proud of these ceremonies since they allow us to repay the wonderful hospitality the people of Earth have shown us ever since we arrived here. You've all done everything you can to help us collect the resources we need to save the people of our planet. It seems only fair that we reciprocate."

Diana allowed herself a small smile as she watched the playback of the footage. She had ensconced herself in an office adjacent to the lobby of the Los Angeles Medical Center. On the desk in front of her was an array of monitors, each one marked with a number corresponding to a camera in the lobby, where she watched the proceedings in the lobby from many different angles.

John was at the podium, which was set up at the landing of the stairway up to the second level of the hospital. The landing jutted out and above the lobby itself, obliging people on the ground floor to look up at whoever was at the podium.

Some of the cameras panned around showing the crowd of well-dressed humans applauding with gusto as John spread his arms out in a gesture of magnanimous gratitude. Beyond the cameras' range, Visitor weapons were drawn and pointed right at the audience.

_This is, quite literally, a captive audience_, Diana thought to herself.

After a moment she spoke into her communicator. "We'll use this take, switching between cameras 3, 5, and 6." She glanced at her checklist. "Prepare Mrs. Dupres for the closing comments; this is the last segment we need."

As she watched her underlings prepare Eleanor Dupres for her turn in front of the cameras, Diana suppressed the flash of anger surging in her, which manifested itself in an urge to spit venom. Her lower back and shoulders, still stiff and aching as they did last night, and the soreness of her eyes testified to her fatigue, but she wouldn't surrender to it.

_There is still just so much more work to do_.

She allowed herself to drift back to the previous evening's disaster, specifically the moment when Kristine Walsh, her handpicked spokesperson, decided to tell her global audience that the Visitors were a hostile alien race bent on conquest. Walsh's declaration, coming mere moments after the local rebels unmasked John on live television, dealt her people's campaign to subjugate the people of Earth and steal much of the planet's natural resources a painful blow.

A potentially lethal blow, even.

The memory of her shooting Kristine on live television gave Diana no satisfaction.

If anything, it tightened the grip of tension squeezing her very being.

_Your betrayal cost you your life, Kristine,_ Diana thought. _The irony is, your death might be interpreted as heroic martyrdom._ _I will not allow it to ruin the Leader's plans and lead to the extinction of my kind._

Her communicator chimed, returning Diana to the present moment. "Mrs. Dupres is ready," said the voice on the other end.

"Very well," Diana replied. "Let's do a rehearsal take of the first two paragraphs, cameras 1 and 2." The feed from the designated cameras came up on two of her monitors. "Ready – action!"

She leaned forward in her chair, watching as the elder human woman – Michael Donovan's mother, no less! – delivered her prepared lines with feigned sincerity.

_Impressive._

Diana had a small smile when Eleanor was done. "One more rehearsal take," she said. "The same parts of the script, the same cameras."

She watched Eleanor rehearse the script again; the second take was even more credible.

_Perhaps I overestimated your value, Kristine._

"Tell Mrs. Dupres she did a great job on both rehearsal takes," Diana said. "Let's do a live take now."

Diana found herself relaxing a little as she watched and listened to Eleanor Dupres recite from the script Diana herself prepared:

"What you have just seen was the real broadcast given by John, the Visitors' Supreme Commander. It is a special service that we give to you, loyal viewers and friends of the Visitors."

_Perfect inflection._

"As you know, the broadcast that many of you at home saw last night was a deception perpetrated by members of the underground scientists' conspiracy. Aside from spreading ridiculous anti-Visitor propaganda, which reasonable people should automatically dismiss as fiction, the most unfortunate development from last night's events was the murder of Kristine Walsh, the Visitors' Official Spokesperson, on live television."

_Impressive control over her facial expressions. _

"I'm told now that the authorities have confirmed that Michael Donovan, the former newsman, was one of the leaders of this terrorist cabal which captured, coerced, and then executed Miss Walsh."

_She exudes sincerity, even as she tells such a fundamental lie._

_I don't think Kristine could have ever done this, who, despite being easy to manipulate, was always a slave to truth._

"Not only did these terrorists murder her in cold blood, but they also tried to destroy our innocence and our faith in our Visitor friends. They forced Kristine to lie about our friends, then killed her using captured Visitor weapons in an attempt to frame them.

"However, we all must resolve to believe the truth in all matters. Only through this spirit will this terrorist conspiracy be unraveled.

"With **your** help, it **will** cease to exist as a threat.

"And so, as we end this message to you, I want to speak for all the peace-loving people in the world, with whom I share gratitude that the Visitors have given **to** us far more than they could have asked **from **us. I'm Eleanor Dupres, from the Los Angeles Medical Center."

Diana's fingers tapped a short message on her communicator, then settled back into her chair. "I want three more live takes; tell Mrs. Dupres to tone down the emotional tenor slightly in paragraphs three, four and five."

As she watched Eleanor repeat her performance a few more times, Diana entered more information into her communications device, detailing the best parts of Eleanor's takes. Her crew could then splice the takes together as she designated.

After Eleanor's fifth run-through, Diana activated her communicator again. "I think we have enough. Tell the Supreme Commander and the Chief of Security I'll be joining them now, after which I'll come to you with final instructions."

Diana walked out of the office and joined John and Steven, who were standing off to one side in the lobby, suitably out of earshot from any of the humans that filled the room.

"So much effort," John said. "I understand the importance of all this work, but it annoys me that we even need to do it."

Diana was about to retort when she noticed Eleanor walking over to them, a smile on her face. Diana looked at both men, and she saw that they understood that now was not the moment to voice any of their misgivings about the current situation. She then positioned herself in between the two of them.

"How was that?" Eleanor beamed.

"Perfect," said Diana with a smile, even as she thought the look on the elder woman's face was precisely what a child hungry for approval would have.

"As long as you're pleased," Eleanor said with a coy shrug.

"We're very pleased," said John, his face oozing benevolence and appreciation.

Diana noticed Eleanor's smile waver a little. "I have to ask," the older woman began to say, "do you really think this… new broadcast – "

"Would have the intended effect?" Diana interrupted gently. "Absolutely."

"What makes you so sure?"

Diana looked at both John and Steven first, then said, "Our understanding of human psychology and history strongly suggests your people would rather believe in something pleasant and comfortable." She watched the older woman process what she'd just told her, then smiled. "Your assistance at this trying time has been invaluable."

"Well," said Eleanor, who looked at the three Visitor leaders in turn. "I'm glad to have contributed whatever meager talents I have to the cause."

"Don't be so modest," Steven said. "As Diana says, your help has been invaluable."

"I'm glad," Eleanor replied.

Steven smiled at her, then reached for both of Eleanor's hands. "I'm sure the past few hours have been challenging for you and for your husband. Diana, will we be needing Mrs. Dupres for anything else?"

"No," Diana said, smiling. "I think we have everything we need from you. Again, thank you very much for your assistance."

"Well, if that will be all," said Eleanor. "It would be good to go home and rest. But, please, if you need me for anything else –"

"We'll make sure Steven lets you know," Diana said.

"So, I'll see you later?" Eleanor said to Steven.

"You sure will."

"Bye."

Diana watched Eleanor walk away, then signaled John and Steven to follow her back into the privacy of the office she was in a few minutes ago. Once they were inside she shut the door, then smiled at Steven. "You're very accessible."

"When it's useful."

"You made us very accessible last night," Diana said.

_Fool. You didn't even see that trap waiting for you._

"If Diana hadn't covered up your bungling of the affair with this bit of instant movie-making, our credibility would be all but destroyed," John said.

"The rebel vermin will be exterminated before nightfall," Steven said, a hint of anger in his voice. "We now have the information that we've needed, intelligence confirmed by multiple sources. We are preparing to launch a major attack on their headquarters. They'll be a memory within hours."

Diana looked at John, who then said to Steven, "This had better not be another wild boast. Last night was a total disaster. And I'm not just talking about what happened to me."

"How do you explain that false report of the entirety of the rebel force being brought to the Mother Ship?" Diana asked.

"Indeed!" John said. "That detail from last night's events is most distressing. When Diana told me about it this morning, I couldn't help but question your fitness for executing your duties as the Chief of Security in this sector."

"If nothing else, the larger implications of that specific incident leaves me – and perhaps John as well – indescribably distressed."

Steven hesitated, scowling at Diana. "I – I have nothing to say about that at this time except that my division is investigating. I don't disagree that last night was an unmitigated catastrophe, and that I bear some responsibility for it. But by no means do I deserve all the blame –"

"Enough," said John. "We will talk later of consequences. Presently we must focus on recovering from last night's failures. You have a mandate and the resources to wipe out the local rebellion. Now, do your job."

Diana didn't bother to hide a small smile as Steven gave John a small bow of the head, then turned to leave the office.

John then turned to her. "So what are we to do next?"

"I have people working on editing and assembling the footage we've been taking for the last few hours; as soon as the material is put together, I will examine everything, make any changes as necessary, then approve it for global broadcast."

"How long will all this take?"

"The work should be completed within the hour."

"Good," said John.

He then looked at Diana, concern on his face. "You look tired."

"We are at war, John. As such, sacrifices must often be made. I feel like I cannot rest until we have done enough to somehow reverse the damage last night's disaster created."

"You've been working too hard. You must get your rest."

"I will. And yet, after I do take that rest, there is more work to be done."

John's face creased with comprehension. "The leader of the local rebellion, that… woman."

"Yes."

"I don't see the point," John said. "Why not just destroy her? If Steven's plan to eliminate the rebels works – "

Diana laughed without amusement, interrupting him. "As you say. 'If.'"

John responded with his own short laugh. "Your lack of confidence in your fellow officer of the line is obvious."

"After what happened last night, can you blame me? Or question my logic?"

"I suppose not," John conceded.

"I'm sure you are not underestimating the potential damage last night's catastrophe represents to our mission. It is nothing less than a possibly mortal blow, something I – we – cannot allow."

"I agree," John said. "But I don't quite see what purpose keeping the rebel prisoner alive serves."

"With all due respect, John, I find your position baffling. Surely you understand why to simply kill her now is not the wisest course of action?" Diana crossed her arms before continuing. "She is insurance against the possibility of the rebels somehow surviving Steven's attempts to exterminate them. Regardless, even if we manage to destroy the rebellion, one must not discard any potential asset until we exhaust its usefulness to us." She softened her tone. "I know how angry you are over what happened last night, but we mustn't allow anger to overrule reason and logic."

"Perhaps you are correct. You often are. It is why I value your opinion so highly." He changed the subject. "I suppose you'll be returning to the Mother Ship after your people have finished their work on the broadcast?"

"As a matter of fact, John, I was planning to leave as soon as possible. I can examine and critique their work on the Mother Ship. As urgent as this project is, I am keen to continue my preparations on a couple of others." Diana gave John a small smile. "What about you? Now that your work here is done, will you be staying in Los Angeles, or will you be returning to New York City?"

"I leave for New York within the hour, then will travel to Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning."

"I see."

"Well," John said, "I don't want to keep you from your work."

"Nor I you from yours."

"I expect full reports on Steven's actions against the local rebels, as well as on your own progress with your projects."

"Of course."

"Good." John smiled at Diana. "Well, then, I feel comfortable about taking my leave, knowing you are in charge here."

Diana smiled back at him. "Thank you, John." She followed him towards the door. "Shall we?" she asked as she opened it for him.

"We shall speak again soon," said John.

"Safe travels, John."


	8. Chapter 7 - Dealing With The Day After

**CHAPTER 7**

Mike Donovan snorted with disgust as he rose from his seat in the rebel headquarters' mess hall. He was watching the television along with a number of his fellow resistance fighters.

On the screen was John, looking resplendent and exuding that air of kind authority he was so masterful at projecting. He was speaking the same words Donovan and the rest of his companions heard in person the night before at the hospital. The Visitor was smiling, his voice magnanimous and benevolent, and whenever he paused and the cameras panned to the audience, everyone applauded with an enthusiasm that echoed within the hospital lobby.

To his trained eye, everything looked like the perfect, idealized version of what the previous night's Visitor broadcast was supposed to be. There was not a solitary sign of the mayhem his group of resistance fighters caused to be seen onscreen.

Then his mother appeared on the screen, and with every word she spoke Donovan's urge to vomit became harder to resist.

"This is bullshit," he muttered as he gathered up his brown leather coat.

"Can you believe they're trying to pull off this fake as the real thing?" asked Robert Maxwell as he gathered up several pieces of metal kitchenware.

"America will buy it too," Caleb Taylor answered. He was wrapping up dinner plates in protective paper and passing them to his son Elias.

Elias agreed, taking the wrapped plates his father handed off to him and putting them in a padded cardboard box. "We sure will. And the world, too. I mean, who would believe lizards could invent a cure for cancer?"

Caleb sighed. "This moving's a waste of time. Julie will never talk."

"If they can cure cancer, they can extract information," said Donovan. His mind flashed to the time when he was briefly the Visitors' prisoner. His mind's eye saw the small yet ominous room dominated by the chair with the restraints at the wrists and ankles. He remembered the tray of instruments that looked like they all could inflict unspeakable pain, and, the sight his imagination could never allow him to forget, that thing that reminded him of a blowtorch with its tongue of flame burning away just inches from one the chair's armrests.

He remembered watching some poor man getting strapped into that chair before, mercifully, a door came down and spared him the sight of seeing any more.

He thanked the heavens yet again that he himself had never been placed in that chair. But the thought of Julie being forced to sit in it, to endure torment he couldn't even imagine in any concrete terms, tightened the knots forming in Donovan's stomach even more.

He inserted his captured Visitor sidearm into the rear of his jeans, then put his arms through the sleeves of his coat. As he smoothed the fit of the jacket over his torso he started walking out of the mess hall. "Make sure you guys are ready to move out in two hours tops."

"Where are you going?" Robert asked.

"We need a new hideout." His eyes were dark with pain when he looked at his fellow resistance fighters. "You know what Julie said: Everyone should think about possible new hideouts just in case something like this ever happens, and to not tell anybody else of the place they thought of."

"You don't know that we need a new HQ for sure," said Robert.

"We can't take any chances. We've waited long enough for her."

"I know the Bernsteins still haven't heard from her, but maybe one of the others – " Robert said.

"Maybe we should give her a little bit more time?" said Caleb.

Donovan sighed, then scratched his brow. "The longer we wait, the more danger we're in. Julie's told us all herself: No one person is bigger than the group and our cause." He looked at everyone in the room. "I hate to even think this, but it's time to assume that either the lizards got her, or that she's – "

"Don't say it, man," Elias interrupted. "Please, don't say it."

Donovan looked at him, understanding. He wondered if anyone could see the unhappiness he felt with the burden he was now choosing to bear in Julie's absence.

A current of despair was threatening to drown his soul, but he wanted to swim against it and cling to the slight pull of hope that he could still feel.

"If you hear from her, tell her to stay where she is until we can pick her up. I'll be back as soon as I can."


	9. Chapter 8 - Sold Out

**CHAPTER 8**

"Release him."

Dan Pascal felt the cuffs that held his wrists high above his head release their hold, and he crashed knees first onto the floor of the cell. He was barely able to drop his hands beneath him before his face likewise collided with the floor.

As he heaved himself up, thinking he had just enough strength to stand, a booted foot crashed into his abdomen.

After a seemingly interminable beating administered by a trio of Visitors over the course of the last few hours, this last kick was totally unnecessary.

"Why – " he coughed a few seconds later, once he had regained his breath.

"Because I can," said the tall, young Visitor.

Pascal looked up at his tormentor. Not for the first time did he think that this Visitor, with his stature, his blonde hair and blue eyes, might have looked like the prototypical matinee idol if not for that twisted, angry expression he wore on his face ever since Pascal first saw him on the Visitor shuttle on the way up to the Mother Ship.

His vision blurred as he struggled to breathe, his eyes looking not just at the Visitor matinee idol who had kicked him so hard in the stomach, but at the two other alien soldiers who were beating him up as well.

All three had been taking turns at administering the worst physical punishment Pascal had ever experienced in his life. Although he was a criminal, he stuck to white collar crimes.

Violence was something he avoided at all costs.

The reason was simple.

He was afraid of pain.

"Get up," the alien matinee idol said.

Pascal coughed again, this time spitting a few drops of blood onto the floor. He held a hand up to a point just above his left eyebrow, wiping away more blood that seeped out of an ugly gash there.

"Please," he said, his voice pathetic. "Please… no more."

"Get up," the Visitor matinee idol said again. "Now!"

The fury in the alien's voice made Pascal ignore the pain signals now flooding his brain protesting against any movement he tried to make. He used the wall of the cell closest to him to help prop himself up to his feet.

The door to the cell opened, and another Visitor stepped in. This one looked like a black man.

"I've just received word the Los Angeles Police Department has a SWAT unit ready to assist if needed," said the black Visitor to Pascal's principal torturer, his basso tones not masking his voice's distinctive Visitor trill. "I've also confirmed that other sources have corroborated this criminal scum's confession."

"Good," said the Visitor matinee idol. "Have Steven and Diana been notified?"

"Yes, and Steven has authorized deployment of two squads. They are waiting for you now at Security Headquarters. Steven also said that you ought to bring this prisoner with you when you launch your attack. A shuttle to take you to Security Headquarters is waiting for you in docking bay seven."

"Thank you. Please report back to Steven and Diana that we will be leaving to attack the target now, and that I will have Mr. Pascal with me."

"I shall."

"Thank you, Captain Jake."

Pascal wiped away more blood from the wound near his left eyebrow, then did the same to another wound on his right temple, as he listened to the two Visitor officers' conversation. He saw the black officer leave, then tensed up when he saw the alien matinee idol make a gesture. The two other Visitors whose faces were hidden behind black helmets and face shields approached him again.

"Please!" Pascal screamed as panic got the best of him. He pressed himself harder against the wall, wishing he could disappear into it and avoid getting beat up again. "Don't hurt me anymore, please!"

The helmeted Visitors clamped their powerful hands on his biceps and began dragging Pascal away from the wall and out of the cell.

"You're coming with us," said the young Visitor.

Pascal tried to resist, but the combination of the beating he'd suffered and the sheer strength advantage of the Visitor soldiers who held him now meant that he had no choice but to go where the aliens wanted to take him.

His entire body throbbed with pain as he was marched down the dark corridor outside his cell. He thought that this was not the view of the Mother Ship interior he remembers seeing on the footage the press contingent shot when the aliens first arrived all those months ago. The footage showed pristine, white, apparently antiseptic halls. The only part of the Mother Ship that kind of matched that aesthetic was the landing bay.

But then he remembered the moment he and his captors first emerged into these dark halls.

He was forty eight years old, but for some reason seeing this dark, hitherto unseen aspect of the Mother Ship amped up the sense of ominous terror that had been his constant companion ever since he was shocked awake in his home, arrested, and taken aboard the monstrous spacecraft.

Maybe it was some evolved form of that natural fear of the dark everyone has and eventually overcomes.

Pascal and his escorts had gone no more than forty meters down the corridor when he heard a low humming sound echo further down the hall. By now, he recognized this sound as a sign the door to a cell was opening.

"Halt," said the Visitor matinee idol, even though Pascal and the soldiers holding him up hard already stopped. Pascal looked up. Despite the darkness of the hallway, he could see three Visitors and a small blonde woman exit a room and turn towards them.

The woman hung like a life-sized rag doll in the grasp of two Visitors, the tops of her feet dragging along the floor. As they got closer, Pascal noticed that she was completely naked. Despite his own pain, he found himself feeling sorry for her, and he was thankful he was never subjected to the indignity of his clothing being stripped from him.

He didn't want to look at her – despite his criminal activities, Dan Pascal still thought of himself as a gentleman – but something compelled him to strain through his blurred vision and have a good look at the woman being dragged out of that other room. He couldn't shake the feeling that there was something familiar about her.

As she and her captors got even closer, he noticed that, unlike him, this woman had not been subjected to a beating. Even through the darkness he could tell she had no bruises or open wounds anywhere on her, even if she had an ugly burn scar on her right hip. For some reason, though, she lacked the strength to even hold her head up, and her honey-colored curls obscured her face.

Then, suddenly, she lifted her head a bit, and her hair parted enough so that he could see her face.

His eyes widened when he recognized her.

"You! Parrish!"

The soldiers holding him tightened their grip on his arms, and fresh new pain erupted in Pascal's brain. "Be quiet," the soldier on his right said.

Something inside him had snapped, and Pascal found new strength upon recognizing the woman prisoner. He strained against his captors as her own escorts approached his.

One thought dominated his mind.

"You sold me out!" he screamed. "You sold me out!"

When she and her escorts got close enough, he tried to kick her, but it was a weak attempt which didn't connect.

The Visitor matinee idol's fist found the right side of his face, and the soldiers holding him slammed him into the wall.

"You sold me out, you bitch!" he kept screaming at the woman, ignoring the Visitors trying to restrain him. "You sold me out!"

The Visitor matinee idol hit Pascal again, and this time it felt like his cheekbone had cracked with the blow. "We told you to shut up!" he said to Pascal.

Tears welled up from his eyes, not from any emotion, but purely as an involuntary physiological response from the Visitor hitting him. The tears obscured his vision even more, but Pascal kept his gaze locked on the woman.

He thought he heard her moan and groan, saying something incomprehensible as she and the Visitors dragging her passed by, but he didn't give a fuck anymore.

He knew – he just knew – Juliet Parrish had told the Visitors where they could find him.

It's her fault he got arrested in the middle of the night.

It's her fault the Visitors took him up here to the Mother Ship.

It's her fault they beat him to a pulp.

It's her fault he finally answered the question the Visitors kept asking him over and over and over as they beat him, and he answered it with the truth.

And that's just as well.

Because now, Pascal thought, the Karmic circle will close.

She sold him out, just as he sold her group out.

Karma is indeed a bitch.

"I hope they kill you!" Pascal yelled at Juliet Parrish, even as he watched her Visitor escorts toss her like a bag of grain into a holding cell.

"I hope they make you suffer!"


	10. Chapter 9 - Turning Tables

**CHAPTER 9**

"Shadow to Eagle Eye, targets look like they've acquired you. They're on approach, fifteen meters and closing from approximate vector 120° relative."

"Roger that. Keep a close watch and get ready to turn the tables on these jokers."

"You got it."

The man who answered to call sign Eagle Eye peered through his digital SLR's viewfinder again. He was crouched behind a chain link fence up on an embankment overlooking a dilapidated building. The zoom lens enabled him to easily observe a pair of men armed with AR15s standing by the entrance of the sewer treatment plant the Los Angeles resistance adopted as its headquarters. The men looked far too relaxed, turning their heads to and fro, holding their assault rifles by the top-mounted carry handle.

_Fucking amateurs._

And as he watched those men through the camera, he listened to a radio transmission only he could hear, a proximity countdown provided by call-sign Shadow through a discreet wireless radio earpiece.

Consequently, he was not surprised when someone poked him in the back with the barrel of a military-issue assault rifle..

"Are you looking for something, my friend?" said the man to Eagle Eye. The man had an unmistakable Mexican accent.

"Move the M16, or I'll make you eat it," Eagle Eye answered.

"How did you know that?" the Mexican said, surprise obvious in his tone. He looked back over his shoulder. "Hey, Mark, come here!"

Another man scurried from behind a car to a spot directly in front of Eagle Eye. This man wore glasses and a black leather bomber jacket, holding a snub-nosed revolver in his right hand.

He jabbed the short pistol at Eagle Eye's left armpit. "OK, no more pictures."

"You're in my way, piglet," said Eagle Eye as he shoved Bomber Jacket out of his way.

"You've got a nasty mouth on you, pal," said Bomber Jacket as he pushed the revolver harder into Eagle Eye's chest.

Eagle Eye stood up from his crouch, his face scrunched up as his eyes bored into Bomber Jacket's.

"You and me, we're gonna go for a walk," said the Mexican, likewise pushing the barrel of his assault rifle into Eagle Eye's back.

"Come on," said Bomber Jacket to Eagle Eye. "Let's go."

Eagle Eye just smiled at Bomber Jacket and his Mexican cohort, when a burly bearded man wearing an olive green military jacket and holding an Ingram MAC-10 machine pistol stepped out from behind his cover inside a beige van parked nearby.

"In about five seconds you're gonna be cloud dancin'," he drawled, pointing his weapon at Bomber Jacket and the Mexican in a way that made it clear he knew how to use it.

"Good work shadowing me," said Eagle Eye to the big man with the beard.

He hung his camera around his neck then confiscated Bomber Jacket and the Mexican's weapons.

"Hands behind your heads," the big bearded man said to Bomber Jacket and the Mexican, and both complied.

Eagle Eye turned towards resistance HQ. "They're all bottlenecked in there, front and back, just like we thought," he said. "This place isn't a camp; it's a tomb."

"Yeah," his big friend agreed as he kept Bomber Jacket and the Mexican covered. "Place sure looks different in the sunshine than it did last night, don't it? But, yeah, Intel got it right."

Eagle Eye nodded, then grabbed the Mexican by the sleeve of his denim jacket. "Come here, Slick." He pushed the Mexican towards a footpath down the embankment towards the rebel hideout, then grabbed Bomber Jacket by the coat collar and instructed him to follow the Mexican. "Mr. Macho Man, I want to talk to your boss."


	11. Chapter 10 - Watching the Storm Gather

**CHAPTER 10**

Ruby Engels hummed to herself as she waved the vacuum cleaner attachment across the drapes. She knew she could never drown out the machine, but she did it anyway.

Part of the reason was this was consistent with what she always did. She had taken job as a cleaning maid at the Visitors' Los Angeles Security Headquarters in Sierra Madre, just east of Pasadena, two and a half months ago. Within mere days, Ruby had endeared herself to her co-workers for her cheerful disposition and proficiency at doing her work despite being over sixty years old.

Of course, because her erstwhile neighbor Daniel Bernstein worked as a ranking officer of the Visitor Friends movement at Security Headquarters as well, she had to disguise herself as a crone who looked like she had an unfortunate tendency to pile on her makeup. She also used a fake name – Madeleine Lichtman – to further throw Daniel or anybody else who could possibly know her off the scent.

But maintaining a front wasn't the only reason why Ruby was humming those tunes.

She was doing it also to keep the wolves of worry at bay.

And she imagined she could feel them gnawing at her limbs in a literal sense.

She couldn't help it.

She knew that the local resistance group, of which she was a part, was in great danger. The Visitors had already responded in part by broadcasting a fake version of the previous night's announcement program. But Ruby knew that a more violent reprisal was inevitable.

After all, she'd seen first-hand just how brutal the Visitors can be.

She was at the hospital the night before, in disguise as an elderly woman wearing a tear-away prop cast on her leg, moved around on a wheelchair by another member of the group, Father Andrew Doyle. And she wasn't just a witness; she was an active participant, wielding a shotgun and exchanging fire with Visitor Shock Troopers. Purely through some unknowable providence, none of her fellow rebels got hurt or killed during this raid, even against the battle-tested alien soldiers.

But the fact that two of their group – Fred King, a doctor and family man who reluctantly agreed to provide the plans to the hospital, and Juliet Parrish, the young woman who led her group – were not with them when they made their escape gave her the most reason to worry.

No one knew what happened to either Fred or Julie. They could have been killed, or they may have been captured. And if they had been captured, it was inevitable that the Visitors would interrogate them, probably torture them, therefore making it was just a matter of time before the aliens discovered where the rebel hideout was.

_Not knowing is always the worst._

Before she left the hideout for her morning shift, Mike Donovan had already decided they had waited long enough for either Julie or Fred to check in from one of the resistance's network of safehouses. They had to assume the worst and prepare to leave their headquarters and find a new one.

Ruby stopped humming as the unmistakable sound of a large number of quick-marching boots competed with the noise of the vacuum cleaner. She turned the machine off, separated the drapes she was cleaning, and opened the window, craning her neck towards the source of the sounds.

Maybe two dozen Shock Troopers were marching out of the building, moving quickly towards a shuttle parked twenty yards away. All of them held laser rifles in their hands, and all of them wore their black combat armor vests and black helmets.

"All squads, prepare for deployment!" said one of the officers standing by the shuttle. "Brian's shuttle's ETA is two minutes and counting. We leave for the rebels' headquarters as soon as he arrives!"

Ruby almost vomited from horror.

_I have to tell the others!_


	12. Chapter 11 - Introductions

**CHAPTER 11**

Eagle Eye waved his left hand in front of his nose, as if doing so would somehow dampen the stench that hung in the air like an invisible cloud.

He looked down at the group of people massing down at the bottom of the stairwell he and his company of prisoners were descending. Eagle Eye was unimpressed with the array of assault rifles and handguns aimed at his and Shadow's direction.

He was, however, getting a little nervous at one of his prisoners. Both of them had their hands clasped behind their heads, but while Bomber Jacket, who led the procession down into the rebel headquarters, was calm, the Mexican was jittery.

"What's the matter with you, huh?" the Mexican said, looking up at Shadow, who just stared back at him and waved his MAC-10 casually at his face. "This is embarrassing!"

"Don't even think about it!" Shadow bellowed. "Move! And calm the fuck down!"

"We've got a stand-off here," said Eagle Eye to the assembly of rebels down below him. As he reached the bottom floor he looked around and asked, "Anybody ever clean this dump?"

He followed Shadow and their two captives deeper into the rebel hideout, while the rest of the group closed around and trailed behind them. The procession of captured, captors, and tense onlookers finally stopped when they came upon a large common room dominated by dining tables of various sizes and shapes, with chairs of various designs strewn all about.

Eagle Eye hung back a bit, standing behind Shadow's bulk, content to watch everything unfold.

Presently another group of rebels rushed into the room from another entry point. Almost everyone had a weapon in their hand.

The lone exception, Eagle Eye noticed, was Michael Donovan.

"Alright," Donovan said as he sauntered into the room. "What happened here?"

"Them!" the Mexican said, pointing back at Shadow.

"Relax, _hombre_," Shadow said, who pointed his MAC-10 up towards the roof and clicked on the safety, chuckling quietly.

Eagle Eye chose that moment to step out from behind his big friend and face Donovan.

"Oh," Donovan said with mild surprise. "Well… I guess I should have known you would have shown up sooner or later."

"How you doing, Gooder?" Eagle Eye replied.

He watched Donovan laugh without amusement. "That's short for 'Do-Gooder.' It's a little nickname he's got for me." Donovan said to the assembled group. "Oh, yeah, we've met before. Lebanon, Nicaragua, Panama, the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, every other hotspot in the world you can think of, you name it."

Eagle Eye didn't move as Donovan strode towards him. "He blows it up, I cover it with the camera, and you folks back home hate him for it without knowing who he is," Donovan said. Jerking a thumb at Eagle Eye, he said, "I want you to meet Ham Tyler, master of covert operations, communications, and bad relations."

Tyler stepped forward. "This is Chris Farber, my associate," indicating Shadow, who smiled at everyone. "And you people are doomed."

He watched the gathered people take in his declaration, then murmur amongst themselves.

"Gooder's got you believing that with a little muscle and God on your side you can pull the bad guys down," Tyler said. "Now that kind of thinking's gonna get you dead. It's time you let the professionals do their job."

"Now that sounds familiar," Donovan scoffed.

"Look, Donovan, I didn't come here to fence with you. We don't have time. I'm here to tell you there's a world network, and from now on you'll do as you're told."

"Now wait a minute, pal –" Bomber Jacket started to say.

"Shut up," Tyler interrupted. He looked at everyone assembled in the room, his gaze moving from one face to the next as he spoke. "You people got real lucky last night pulling off a nice stunt. But without proper leadership, you're gonna get hung out to dry. Now we're organized and we've got a plan, and…" Tyler reached out his hand, and Farber slapped an ammo magazine into it. "... we've got a new kind of ammo that'll cut those lizards in two."

He turned to Donovan again, handing him the magazine. "You can stay independent, get wiped out, or you can join the organization and really help hammer punch these lizards back off the planet. The choice is up to you."

The assembled rebels talked among themselves again, more loudly than before. Tyler had no problems picking up on the various conversations going on all around him.

"I don't trust this guy."

"So there IS a worldwide organization! Julie was right!"

"I don't care about joining up with a larger group. We're doing fine on our own here."

"Way I see it, it's just trading one set of leaders for another. As long as we get the job done."

"I dunno. It doesn't seem right to me. Feels like we're just throwing Julie away if we join up with this guy."

"I just plain don't like this guy."

Then Bomber Jacket spoke up. "You heard what Donovan said: The guy's a warmonger. Getting people killed turns him on –"

Tyler grabbed Bomber Jacket by the neck, gave a slight squeeze, then pushed him away. "Don't you ever say that," he said through gritted teeth.

The Mexican held Bomber Jacket back, who tried to counter-attack. Tyler didn't so much as flinch. He looked at everyone gathered in the room. "Donovan may hate my guts," he said in a booming voice. "But he'll tell you I know what I'm doing."

He stepped back towards where Farber was standing, then leaned on a wall. His gaze traveled from one face to the next, and he could see that as no one moved nor spoke a single word, every person in that room was weighing up every word he'd said in the last few minutes on their own.

In the silence of the room his keen hearing picked up the sound of a telephone ringing. It rang only once, cluing him in to the likelihood someone was waiting for that call.

The silence in the common room lasted for a few moments more, until finally Mike Donovan spoke. "You know, we're not killers like you, Tyler. We may be bumping into each other down here, but we're a unit. We've made more noise than you have." He walked up to Tyler and thrust the ammo magazine into Tyler's leather coat's breast pocket. "They know we're here."

Tyler almost laughed. "Which brings me to my next point."

"Donovan!" A middle-aged Catholic priest ran into the room, his eyes wide open in panic. "Everybody! That was Ruby who just called. The Visitors – they're on their way! We've got to get out of here!"


	13. Chapter 12 - Final Approach

**CHAPTER 12**

"ETA to the rebel hideout?"

Brian watched the squad vehicle's navigator/comms officer consult one of his monitor screens.

"We are on our final approach, sir. Touchdown in three minutes."

"And what about the LAPD support squad?"

"I've just been in touch with Lt. Becerra; he's coordinating that squad. LAPD is two blocks away. They should arrive at the target at approximately the same time as we do."

"Very good," Brian said. "Issue an announcement to our squads when we're on our landing cycle. Meanwhile, I'll see to our human guest."

"As you wish, sir."

Brian walked out of the cockpit and threaded his way through a couple dozen Shock Troopers towards the rear of the vehicle. Secured to one of the benches was a bruised and bloodied Dan Pascal.

The counterfeiter looked up at Brian with undisguised fear. Brian gestured to one of his soldiers, who removed the cuffs that held Pascal's wrists to a couple of brackets near his hips.

As soon as Pascal was freed, Brian reached down and pulled him to his feet, then dragged him towards the front of the vehicle.

"If you haven't told us the truth, Pascal, you've forged your last ticket!" said Brian as he shoved the human up against the squad vehicle's front bulkhead which separated the cockpit from the passenger compartment. The human gasped, the wind having been knocked out of him.

"It's the truth," the counterfeiter blubbered out. "I swear it is! You'll find them there."

Brian felt a near-irresistible urge to strike Pascal again, if only to act on the anger he clung to as though it was vital, but he held back. He'd long ago lost count of the blows he himself delivered on this pathetic man, and his was but one pair of hands that brutalized the counterfeiter's body in an effort to extract the information he was assigned to get. He was the ranking officer during the interrogation, which meant he didn't need to participate, but he chose to do so anyway.

His fury needed a means of expression, after all.

Moreover, his anger gave him a feeling of profound strength.

But beyond anything else, his rage made sense to him because it was fully justified.

Just as Diana had, Brian understood that the rebel infiltration of the Medical Center scarcely half a day ago represented a serious threat to the success of their people's mission on Earth. He wasn't about to underestimate the enemy.

And Pascal did help the local rebels; he confessed as much. This made him one of the enemy, regardless of how indirect his actual participation was, as far as Brian was concerned.

And as he thought about all he had done in the last few hours, Brian saw his decision to actively involve himself in Pascal's interrogation as nothing particularly significant.

He was just doing his job. Pascal's wasn't the first interrogation Brian had participated in, and he was fairly sure it wouldn't be the last.

Now, though, he was the featured actor in the next act of the play: He now has the honorable task of coordinating the assault on the rebel hideout. He had been given command over two squads for the job. He didn't know how he got this assignment, but he suspected that Diana herself made that decision.

The fact that Steven, his immediate superior, was not given this job was not lost on him at all.

Who knows – maybe the Supreme Commander himself, John, made the decision to assign this job to him.

Regardless of whose decision it was to give him this particular assignment, Brian wanted to do it as well as he possibly could. He recognized that wiping out the local rebellion may not undo the damage it had done the night before, but it would surely discourage future uprisings from even happening.

And if doing so meant that he would rise further up the ranks and receive glory for his achievements, it was all the better.

He turned away from the cowering Pascal, whom he now saw as nothing more than the way and the means to a bright destiny.


	14. Chapter 13 - Bringing the House Down

**CHAPTER 13**

Ham Tyler found himself in the eye of a hurricane.

Like a statue he was unmoving, taking everything in while betraying nothing of his thoughts or feelings, even as dozens of resistance fighters were moving very quickly in random directions all around him. The urgency of the group's need to evacuate as quickly as possible permeated everything and everyone in the rebel headquarters. Save for his eyes, he seemed frozen in place.

"Gooder!" he bellowed, finally finding one of two people he was looking for.

Mike Donovan pushed his way through the rush of people to where Tyler was. "This is all we've got," he said as he knelt and set down a box containing a few sticks of dynamite and a coil of ignition fuse. "We're running low."

Tyler appraised the contents of the box. "No worries; Chris will be back in a couple of minutes with enough party favors that'll bring the house down." He looked at Donovan. "So, what do you say?"

"I've talked to my people. Wish we had more time to talk about things, think about our options, but it seems to us that our best move is to hook up with your network. At least for now."

"Smart choice."

"IF you do something for us."

"And what's that?"

"Julie Parrish, our leader… we don't know what happened to her. She… she got separated from us last night when we were making our escape from the hospital. We're… we're afraid the Visitors got her."

"Or she's dead."

Donovan sighed. "I hate to admit it, but that's also possible."

"Honestly, I'm not sure what's worse."

Tyler saw a twinge of pain in his Donovan's eyes.

"I know this much," Donovan said. "They – we – want Julie back. We NEED her back."

"OK, here's the deal: We'll use the network's resources, find out what happened to her. If she was taken alive we'll go from there."

"Not good enough," Donovan said. "If the Visitors have her, we won't settle for anything less than getting her back."

"I don't know how smart that is, but fine," Tyler said, nodding, then changed the subject. "How much more time do you need to get out of here?"

"We're not as ready as we'd like, but most of the essentials are ready to go," Donovan said. "We've been packing up since around 5 this morning."

"Do you have a new hidey hole picked out?"

"I scouted out a place."

"OK, Chris and I are going to cover your escape. You lead your people to the end of the sewer tunnel; it will spit you out near the 6th Street bridge in Boyle Heights. We'll meet you there after taking care of the snake patrol here. We'll contact the network to meet us with vehicles to help move everything to this new HQ you've picked out."

"Sounds good."

As both men rose from their crouch, Tyler pressed the earpiece in his right ear and listened to the transmission. His forehead furrowed.

"That was Chris," he said to Donovan. "He said the snake patrol is about one minute out, and there's half of the LAPD all rushing to this location. You and your people sure pissed those fuckers off last night."

Tyler saw the denial etched on Donovan's face. "How did they find us so quick?"

"Never mind that," Tyler said. "Get your ass in gear and lead your people out of here. We'll talk more in a bit."

Donovan slapped Tyler's back, then ran towards the entrance into the sewer tunnel network. At just that moment Chris Farber hustled his bulk into the room, carrying a couple of military green duffel bags. Fortunately most of the rebel fighters had already moved on to another part of the building. Otherwise, Farber would have knocked them over like pins in the path of a bowling ball.

"Are they on their way out?" Farber asked.

Tyler nodded as he listened to Donovan instructing the rebels. "Yeah. Gooder's got a handle on his end." He pointed at the stash of explosives and supplies Donovan left him. "We got enough?"

Farber flashed him a grin of delight. "Hell yeah, we do."

"How quickly can you rig this joint?"

"I've stuck C-4 and wired it all up in all the right places on my way in here."

"Good man."

"I just need to use a bit more over there," Chris said, pointing a column twenty-some feet away, "here," indicating the wall behind them, "and a couple more positions near our exfil point. I'll use these boom sticks here and save our C-4, just in case."

"OK, "said Tyler. Chris handed him a MAC-10, and Tyler cocked it. "Get busy. I'll cover you. You got a Teflon load in this?"

"You bet."

Tyler assented with a grunt, then launched himself into a half-sprint towards the entrance to the rebel hideout. As he approached he could hear the boot falls of the alien soldiers as they descended down into the bowels of the building.

He took a position behind a giant stainless steel floor-mounted food steamer in the kitchen area, focusing his senses for clues as to when to engage the Visitor soldiers. From the tempo and rhythm of their boots Tyler could tell that the Shock Troopers were either not expecting anybody to still be in the building, or that they were supremely confident that their armor vests would prove as effective against firearms as they always were.

When he thought there were maybe four or five soldiers in the area, Tyler broke cover, spraying the room with Teflon-coated armor-piercing projectiles. The echoes of the MAC-10's rapid-fire report competed with the anguished cries of the Shock Troopers whose bodies erupted with gouts of green blood.

_Surprise, you bastards._

Tyler crouched again as three more Shock Troopers entered the room. The soldiers made an instant tactical adjustment, taking cover behind counters and spaces along the walls that were not in Tyler's line of fire. He took that opportunity to move to his next position, taking cover behind a large walk-in freezer.

As soon as he heard the Visitor soldiers again move towards him, he broke cover and fired a fusillade of bullets at them, then retreated back into cover. Tyler smiled to himself, knowing that the Visitors were confused as to why his submachine gun was able to inflict such serious damage on them.

He peeked around the freezer, crouched low to the ground, assessing whether or not it was safe to scurry to his next covered position deeper in the building. Seeing no movement, he sprinted from behind the freezer and moved to the next room, taking a place behind a wall on the far side.

The next group of alien soldiers – six of them this time – hurried after Tyler, firing a few bursts of blue laser fire at him, but missing due to his erratic course across the room. As soon as Tyler reached safety behind the wall, he crouched slightly, then broke cover and fired back.

Three more Shock Troopers fell, but the MAC-10 stopped spitting out its deadly projectiles. The Visitors instantly recognized their chance to return fire, and Tyler just barely avoided getting cooked by a barrage of laser fire, spinning back behind the wall for cover.

_Fuck. Bad time to go empty._

He dropped the exhausted magazine onto the floor, where its clatter echoed inside the confined space.

_That's right, you scaly bastards. I'm out._

_Except I'm not._

Tyler smiled as he heard more soldiers enter the room. They now were proceeding with much more caution, moving more slowly and with much more care than their dead compatriots did. He cocked the MAC-10 and fired a few short bursts, hitting even more of his Visitor pursuers.

He ran to his next position, down the hall and into a room to his right. Farber was there, pushing three dynamite sticks into a wad of plastic explosives he had stuck on the wall like a humongous piece of chewing gum.

"Having fun?" Farber asked.

Tyler just snorted, amused, as he peeked around the doorway. Through the shadows he saw the slow movements of more Visitors on his trail. He fired at them and watched all of them fall. But behind them, more took their place, and Tyler knew there were a few more behind them just out of sight. He emptied his magazine with a long burst into the hallway.

He scurried back to Farber, who was now wiring up the explosives.

"I need another mag."

Farber slapped a new magazine into Tyler's waiting hand, and Tyler rushed back towards the hallway. He took a peek, then fired, hitting four more soldiers.

Tyler took another peek, counted eight more targets move into the hall.

"It's getting real busy out there," he said to Farber.

"I'm almost finished."

Tyler nodded, knowing Farber wouldn't have seen the gesture, then fired into the hallway again, laying down some suppressing fire.

Thirty seconds later he heard Farber call to him. Tyler stopped firing and approached his large companion.

"I'll meet you at the staging point," said Tyler.

"You got it." Farber handed Tyler a triggering device with fuse wire dangling down onto the floor, then slapped him on the shoulder. "Good luck, brother. I'm gone."

Tyler watched his companion scurry out of the room through a doorway into the adjacent room, then followed him and took a position behind a wall. He stayed crouched out of sight, knowing the Shock Troopers would start advancing towards him again, particularly since he hadn't returned fire in the last minute and a half.

Sure enough, a cautious soldier entered the room, with another one just behind.

Tyler tightened his grip on the twist-action trigger as he watched them from his protected position. He knew that he could spring the explosive trap Farber had prepared at any moment, but he held back.

_Just a little closer, you scaly fucking bastard._

_Just a little more..._

As the lead soldier crept right next to where the wad of explosives, Tyler twisted the handle.

_Time to bring the house down._

A series of explosions rocked the former rebel headquarters. Farber had planted charges strategically on load-bearing walls and columns throughout the building, causing most of the roof to cave in, thereby crushing any people unfortunate enough to be inside the structure.

It took almost two minutes for the ground to stop shaking, not just from the explosions, but from the myriad impacts of pieces of the roof crashing down. When everything seemed settled enough, Tyler stood up, waving a hand in front of his face so that he wouldn't choke on the clouds of dust and debris wafting around.

He picked his way through the rubble to where he knew the alien soldier had been. He kneeled down when he saw red on the ground. It wasn't Visitor blood he was looking at, of course. Rather, it was the tattered remnants of the alien's uniform. In amongst the debris were various body parts – an arm here, a piece of a leg there – smeared with green alien blood. Tyler's gaze swept across the floor, finding smashed pieces of black Shock Trooper helmet here and there, with pulverized pieces of alien skull stuck to the material.

As he stood up to meet up with Farber, he found a few portions of a torso. The red uniform was smeared dark with blood, but there was a section where the alien's synth-skin had torn away, revealing the green-black scales beneath.

"Now that's a waste of good luggage," he quipped.


	15. Chapter 14 - Terminus

**CHAPTER 14**

Brian flinched when a series of explosions from deep within the rebel headquarters filled his ears. Though the sounds of the detonations were muffled, they were still loud enough to surprise not just him, but almost everyone waiting outside as well.

Tremors in the ground accompanied the explosions, and as he and everyone else watched, some of the walls of the building caved into the middle of the structure. The noise of crumbling concrete, snapping wood, shattering glass, and metal twisting and bending out of shape took over from the muffled explosions. And as the cacophony continued, the top of the structure crashed into the building as well.

Clouds of dust and smoke started to rise from the collapsed building, and as Brian continued to watch in mute horror as what remained of the two squads assigned to him staggered out from inside it. Two or three Shock Troopers made it out of the structure before dropping face-first into the dirt, while a few more were being assisted out by their peers who were fortunate to not have been inside the building when it imploded. The lucky few who managed to get out of the structure were all covered in dust and grime; some had portions of their red-orange uniforms torn and singed, and several had sections of their synth-skin torn off, revealing their reptilian scales.

Brian watched the scene unfolding in front of him, when he realized that a squad of LAPD officers and the SWAT unit called in to assist were also there to see everything he was looking at.

With a snarl he spun around. He saw Dan Pascal being held by one of his Security underlings.

"Let him go," he said to the guard.

The Security guard released his hold on Pascal's bicep, and as soon as he stepped away from the counterfeiter, Brian drew his sidearm.

And even before Pascal could utter a word in protest, Brian aimed and pulled the trigger.

A bright blue flash hit Pascal flush in the chest, making the counterfeiter's flesh erupt in flames and smoke, scorching parts of his lungs and heart , turning them into char.

The weapon's pulsing whine drowned out whatever Pascal's last words were.

But Brian didn't care at all as he stormed away.


	16. Chapter 15 - Setbacks and Successes

**CHAPTER 15**

Diana stared at her computer monitor as a wordless expression of frustration escaped her lips.

_Damn_, she thought, after taking a few steps away from her computer monitor as well as a moment to compose herself. _This is not what I wanted to see._

She was in her private laboratory working on a small amount of the genetic material extracted from Juliet Parrish. She had just run a portion of the material through the first battery of simulations and tests, but her equipment had scarcely begun their processes when it flashed the following message:

_Incompatible_.

Diana returned to her station. _Perhaps there is some contamination of the sample. _Her fingers danced on the keypad controlling the automated equipment handling the genetic material, entering the command for the machine to decontaminate and sterilize itself again. After the machine took all of three minutes to complete its self-sterilization process, Diana took another small sample of Parrish's genetic material and ran the tests again.

And, just as quickly as it did before, the equipment reported the same result it did previously.

She walked to her desk and sat.

_This feels like a failure_.

_I should have assigned much tighter security over Robin Maxwell when I had her months ago. Had I done so, I could have observed and overseen her entire pregnancy, and therefore controlled the outcome of that experiment._

If there was one thing that inflamed Diana's anger, that was it.

Failure.

Her anger from the previous evening's fiasco at the hospital was still fresh, and the report of Brian's failure to eradicate the local rebels – and losing most of two squads' worth of troopers – just a few hours ago swelled it even more.

But this…

_No_.

_This is not your failure, nor anyone else's._

_You knew this was the most likely result. _

_This is definitely not the outcome you had hoped for, but, honestly, wasn't this what you expected?_

Diana rubbed her temple, then sighed. Doing so enabled her to vent most – but not all – of her frustration.

_This_ _was probably inevitable. Finding another human with the genetic compatibility I need to recreate that experiment was always going to be near-impossible. _

_It's a shame. _

_It would have been interesting to replicate it with this woman Juliet Parrish. _

She stretched her neck muscles and massaged them, stiff as they were from stress and fatigue that her six hour nap did not completely eliminate.

Diana returned to her computer terminal. Instead of redoing the genetic testing and simulation routines one more time, however, she pulled up the reports on Juliet Parrish's first session in the conversion chamber.

Some of the information – Parrish's physiological responses to test stimuli, metrics measuring how strong her resistance was to the truth serum given to her – was only mildly interesting. Most humans who undergo the conversion process exhibited very similar responses. Juliet Parrish was not exceptional in this regard.

However, the existence of a hitherto undiagnosed cardiac condition was a minor concern. But Diana was far from worried.

_I have converted other subjects with more significant health issues; this won't deter me from converting this woman._

Diana leaned back in her chair, then called up the reports on the interrogation phase of Parrish's first session.

She read through the report, skimming through it until she found what she was looking for.

_Here it is._

_The identities of her fellow rebels._

Parrish had surrendered this trove of information under the influence of Diana's newest version of truth serum. She allowed herself a small smile, pleased that her latest concoction had proven so effective. Parrish, after all, corroborated the confession beaten out of the counterfeiter Pascal and confirmed the location of the erstwhile rebel headquarters. She was therefore confident the information she was now reading was completely reliable.

Along with the names and other gathered information were visual representation of the rebels themselves, images extracted from Parrish's own mind by the conversion chamber.

Having watched hours of accumulated video footage, Diana recognized some of the faces, particularly the ones she saw at the Medical Center the night before.

Michael Donovan, of course, who was brought before her when he was captured several months ago. She pressed a finger to her lips, mildly surprised that he was not the local rebellion's leader, and that this Juliet Parrish was.

_How curious, though. It seems that, given a choice, this woman Parrish would rather not be their leader. _

_Perhaps that is something to exploit later._

She filed that thought away, then moved on the rest of the names and computer-generated visuals.

_Robert Maxwell, _she thought, as she studied the computer-generated image. _I recognize this one: He was_ _Parrish's companion when they infiltrated the Medical Center._

_Steven could have stopped them before they even entered the hospital. Yet another detail of his utter failure last night._

Diana continued reading the interrogation reports.

_Elias Taylor, and his father Caleb._

_It seems she has a strong relationship with this pair. _Diana called up another name and image closely associated with the father and son duo. _There was_ _another Taylor, Benjamin, Caleb's older son who was a close friend of Parrish's. This last Taylor died several months ago, shot to death by Shock Troopers._

_Perhaps I can study this part of her memories in closer detail._

She moved on to the rest of the rebels Parrish unwittingly gave up during interrogation.

_Ruby Engels._

_Margaret Blodgett._

_Andrew Doyle, a Roman Catholic priest._

_Mark McIntyre, former LAPD officer._

_Sancho Gomez._

Diana wrote notes into her terminal as she continued her study of the rebel fighters. The woman had surrendered the names and images of forty seven people, a far smaller group than Diana expected. This included both her current comrades as well as ones killed in the war so far. She also discovered that Parrish wasn't especially close to most of the members of the group, preferring the company of a select few among the group.

_I must explore the dynamics of her relationships with everyone in her group. There may be exploitable weaknesses there._

Diana arched her back and raised her arms, stretching out her muscles, then composed herself. She then activated her communicator.

"Captain Jake."

"Good evening, Diana. How may I be of service?"

"I am sending you some information presently." Diana entered a command into her terminal. "The data I've just transmitted to you is the identities of the known members of the local rebel cell. See to it that this information is distributed to our forces on the ground.

"Shoot to kill."

"It shall be done."

Diana turned off her communicator, then switched her monitor to view a different feed.

The still form of Juliet Parrish filled the screen. The human was on the floor of her holding cell, her side pressed against the wall. Diana couldn't tell if the human was awake or asleep with her head resting on her upraised knees, her face hidden from the cameras. Diana hadn't started the actual conversion process yet, but her preparations towards that end were well underway.

_Soon, my dear, I shall get to know everything about you, and use all of that against you. It won't be too long before you become mine._


	17. Chapter 16 - Nothing But Questions

**CHAPTER 16**

_How long have I been awake?_

Julie sat on the floor of her cell, her head resting on her knees. She had drawn her legs up tight against her body, her arms wrapped around her shins. This was partly a protective posture, but she also did this so that she didn't have to expend energy keeping her head up. She had closed her eyes, disconcerted by the fact that her headache was a lot worse when they were opened, and it was accompanied by waves of nausea and dizziness. Not only that, but her vision was blurry. So she kept her eyes shut, trying to alleviate the throb of pain that pulsated in her head with each heartbeat.

_This might be the worst headache I think I've ever had._

_And to think it was actually worse earlier._

_At least it feels as if things are starting to calm down._

On the other hand, there was still a price to pay. Whenever she had her eyes closed, her mind's eye kept flashing a variety of random images, mostly of her friends and comrades in the Los Angeles resistance group she led, seemingly without any rhyme or reason. She couldn't understand why she kept seeing all of these images in her head. Nor could she control them or stop them from filling her mind.

_What's happening to me?_

Julie sighed, her headache getting more intense whenever she made an effort to think consciously.

But she couldn't help herself.

It was just in her nature to want to understand everything she could.

_What are they planning to do with me?_

_If they were just going to kill me, they would have done it already. _

_They'll probably torture me, get me to talk and betray my friends._

_Well, that's not going to happen._

Julie pressed her forehead hard into the tops of her thighs in a useless gesture to get the pain in her head to subside. She also swallowed hard and bit her lip, her stomach threatening to squeeze out whatever was in it in an acidic eruption.

Aside from the headache, dizziness, nausea, and the images coming into and out of her consciousness, she also felt a strange unnatural warmth coursing through her body, and she could detect the faint trace of an unknown taste lingering on her tongue. But perhaps worst of all was the feeling that there was an impenetrable fog that wrapped itself around her mind, making conscious thought much more difficult than she knew it should be.

_I've never felt anything like this before._

_What's going on with me?_

_It's like… it's a bit like being on pot, but a whole lot more intense._

Then it hit her. Her heart rate and pressure spiked at the sudden epiphany, and as they did so did the intensity of her headache, at least for a few moments.

_Drugs. That's it._

_The Visitors drugged me._

_But how did they do it… and when…_

_And why?_

Julie moaned as her headache intensified again, and she cursed the fact that her discovery came at such a painful price. The pain grew worse as she willed herself to summon her memories.

Bits and pieces of images and other sensations weaved in and out of her awareness. Julie knew she wasn't just imagining these things; these were actual memories.

_That weird place… I was standing in the middle of that weird room._

_Lights… flashing lights… I remember these lights._

_And that sound… that noise was everywhere._

_And the cold… it was so damn cold in that room._

_At least it's not cold in this room._

_It's not a room_, she admonished herself, eliciting a particularly sharp burst of pain in her head.

_You're in a prison _cell.

Julie gasped, the pain in her head threatening to overcome her with its intensity.

But she decided to persist, determined to not give in to the agony inside her head that seemed to be growing like some kind of malignant creature.

She shuddered as these memories and sensations washed over her like a frigid wave.

_Why are they doing this?_

Julie opened her eyes, knowing that to do so was to invite even more misery into her world. Through the haze of pain, and despite her blurred vision, she saw a small puddle not far from where she sat, and felt the flush of humiliation spread on her face.

She suddenly remembered how that puddle came to be there.

When Julie first regained consciousness, the first thing she felt was that terrible headache and nausea.

In addition to that, though, was a terrible, irresistible urge to relieve the pressure that had built up in her bladder.

She swung her legs over the edge of where she'd been laying down, a thinly-cushioned shelf attached to a hollowed-out section of the back wall of her cell. Though she couldn't see clearly, she did spot what looked very much like a toilet a few feet from where she was.

Her legs failed her, though, when she tried to reach it, and she fell hard onto the floor. She tried to crawl to it, but nature's call overcame her, and she wet herself.

Hot teardrops seared a path down Julie's face as that humiliating memory filled her mind.

And beyond the humiliation, she felt a raw terror.

She knew – deep in her bones she just _knew _– that whatever the Visitors were going to do her, whatever they've already done to her, getting her all drugged up and made unable to remember much of anything past just the most recent events, it was all just getting started. And it terrified her even more to know that if she didn't know what they were doing to her, she had no idea how to fight against it.


	18. Chapter 17 - More Things to Think About

**CHAPTER 17**

"Hey, man."

Mike Donovan felt his heart surge at the sound of Elias Taylor's voice. He'd fallen asleep in the passenger seat of the Chevy Tahoe. The ex-cameraman rubbed his eyes and yawned.

"Where are we? We there yet?" he asked, still unwilling to open his eyes fully. The forty-some minute nap didn't kill his exhaustion, but it was the most sleep he'd managed in the last day.

"Yeah," Elias answered. "We just got here."

"Here" was Sable Ranch, an abandoned filming location near Santa Clarita, a community about forty miles north of downtown Los Angeles. Nestled within the local canyons and surrounded by brush-covered mountains and ridges, Sable Ranch was mostly destroyed when a wildfire raged through the area a few years before the Visitors arrived on Earth. The property's owners attempted to resurrect the facilities after the devastating wildfire, but the alien occupation postponed the rebuilding indefinitely. There were still remnants of the ranch's storied celluloid history that remained relatively untouched by the fires, however, and the Los Angeles resistance was happy to take residence in the buildings and functional sets that somehow survived the wildfire.

"Damn," Donovan said when he finally opened his eyes, finding the ambient light at the point where the darkness was encroaching on the last remnants of the day. Elias was driving into a part of the property made to look like a typical Western town from the late 1800s. For the sake of verisimilitude, there was no lighting outside of the buildings, although all of them did have electrical infrastructure built into them. The inexorable coming twilight lent the anachronistic scene of modern vehicles in the Wild West scenery a bit of a weird aspect.

"I didn't realize it's almost sunset," Donovan said.

"Yep. It's about three hours before curfew."

"Yeah," Donovan agreed after a big yawn. "Curfew would have made travel more complicated."

As Elias maneuvered the vehicle into its parking spot in front of the town saloon, Donovan looked out at the rest of the vehicles and the mass of people unloading them. Because this area of the ranch was supposed to simulate a town from the Wild West, the streets were unpaved, so occasionally a cloud of dust and dirt flew up when the canyon breezes breathed through.

"This is the last load, right?" asked Donovan.

"Yeah. We had to leave some gear behind, some people's personal stuff."

"OK," Donovan nodded, when a thought suddenly occurred to him. "Shit, wait a sec. Did anybody pack up Julie's stuff?"

"Yeah. Maggie did," replied Elias. "Honestly, none of us guys thought about that. But I'm glad she did, with help from Harmony."

Donovan sighed, relieved. "Me too."

As soon as Elias put the SUV in park, Donovan moved to open his door so that he could begin unloading the vehicle's cargo. Elias grabbed his left arm. "Wait a sec."

Donovan slid back into the seat. "Yeah?"

He watched Elias scratch the back of his head, his eyes eluding Donovan's eye contact. When Elias finally met his gaze, he said, "Tell me something, Donovan. Can we trust this guy Tyler?"

Now it was Donovan's turn to hesitate. He looked straight out the windshield, his mind traveling back to the myriad occasions when his newsman's lens was trained on something he suspected Tyler was involved in.

He'd covered the aftermath of political assassinations, targeted demolitions of high-value installations, and other similar covert missions done under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency. While Donovan could never catch Tyler in the act, he had ultra-reliable sources who confirmed Tyler's involvement, whether direct or indirect, in such operations.

"There's no simple answer," Donovan said finally. "People like Tyler… people like him operate in the shadows. Secrecy is a life and death thing for them."

He looked at Elias, whose face was creased with what Donovan read as anxiety and concern.

"Hey," Donovan said, a tight grin on his lips. "I wouldn't worry so much."

"Him and you don't seem to get along so good," said Elias.

Donovan shrugged. "I think it's all got to do with the fact that his life depends on secrets, while my job is all about taking the lid off of 'em. I don't think it's anything personal."

Elias looked at him with doubt. Donovan squeezed his shoulder to reassure him.

"It'll be alright. This is one time where he and I are on the same side, more or less." He opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle, and Elias followed suit. They met at the tailgate.

"He did arrange for the extra vehicles to help with moving out our people and gear, right?" Donovan asked. "And he promised he'd help us find out what happened to Julie, at the very least. I don't quite know how he and his people are gonna manage that, but he's well-connected."

"I guess," Elias said as he opened up the tailgate and reached in for the first boxes to unload. "Except now we definitely owe him. And where I'm from, it ain't ever a good thing to owe anyone."

Donovan stopped shifting boxes to the edge of the tailgate and looked at Elias, who looked away and concentrated on the first box he was going to unload. "What are you trying to say?" he asked.

"'cause now he's got leverage, man." Elias shrugged. He slid a box from the edge of the tailgate, preparing to lift it. "Been my experience that people who got it tend to abuse it. Is he that kinda guy?"

Donovan looked at Elias, pondering the question.

Elias shrugged again, then lifted his box. "Just something to think about, man."

_As if I needed much more of that_, thought Donovan as a gentle breeze blew through the Western set, leaving him unsure if his shudders were from the cold wind or if they were from the Elias' questions.


	19. Chapter 18 - The Painful Truth

**CHAPTER 18**

Mike Donovan led Ham Tyler into the Los Angeles Public Library's Central branch on 5th and Flower. He'd been to Central before, of course. He'd covered many a civic event there, particularly earlier in his career as a cameraman. As always, though, he was impressed with both the size and the sense of history radiating from the place.

"It's sad," he said.

"What is?" Tyler replied, never breaking stride.

"Not a lot of people visiting the library these days. Particularly this one."

"Yeah," Tyler said. "You sure about this, Gooder? This doesn't feel right."

"What doesn't feel right?"

"I don't know. It feels like we're being set up. We've already got solid intel on your lady friend. We know the Visitors took her alive."

"Well, let's just say I'm more comfortable if I get information from more than just one source."

"Journalist to the end, huh? Gotta have corroboration."

Donovan chuckled, then led Tyler to the elevator lobby.

"Where are we going again?"

"Social Sciences. Lower Level 3."

The two of them waited for an elevator, then stepped into the first one that was going down. As luck would have it the elevator was empty. Tyler pressed the LL3 button, then Donovan pulled out a folded newspaper he had stashed under his brown and tan leather jacket, tucked into his jeans.

"It's today's L.A. Times," he explained. "This is one way we stay in touch with the Fifth Column."

"I still can't believe you trust those lizards."

"Yeah, well, the Fifth Column has never let me down."

"You know your lady friend sold you guys out at the old HQ three nights ago," Tyler said, changing the subject abruptly.

"I can't believe that."

"Gooder, you know how to put two and two together, don't you?"

Donovan turned to look at Tyler. "Yeah?"

"How else did the lizards find out where your HQ was?"

Donovan's silence said everything.

The elevator doors opened right then, and Donovan was relieved he could leave that part of the conversation behind him. He and Tyler stepped out, finding themselves just outside the Social Sciences section. Tyler pointed out an unoccupied table, which was pretty easy since there was hardly anybody in that part of the library, and they walked to it. Donovan laid the paper on the dark-stained wood, then opened up the Times to the classified ads section.

He found the Career ads, then traced his finger down the page of listings. After about ten seconds he tapped his finger on one listing.

"This is it."

Tyler read the ad silently.

"Help wanted. Research assistant sought. Expertise with Voltaire's _Candide _a must. Send resume and contact info to: Mr. Hunter Scott, Five Columns Academia, 2nd Edition St., #77, West Hollywood, CA 90046."

"Clever bastards," he said _sotto voce_, eliciting a short laugh from Donovan.

"C'mon," Donovan said. "We know where to look."

He led Tyler down the aisles of shelves until they found the section where books on Voltaire were located. "Now look for _Candide_," he instructed Tyler.

"It won't be here," Tyler said.

"How'd you know?" Donovan asked, his eyes already searching the shelves.

"Because I know _Candide _will be in the Literature section."

Donovan looked at Tyler. "I'm impressed. I never figured you to be an academic."

Tyler snorted. "There's a lot you don't know about me."

"True," said Donovan, his eyes back on the shelves. "And, actually, you're right; _Candide _would be in the Literature section. Except – " He reached in between two large volumes of literary criticism tomes on Voltaire's work and fished out a thin yellow and black paperback, holding it up for Tyler's inspection.

_Candide_, by Scott Hunter. 2nd Edition.

"Son of a bitch," Tyler said.

"Like you said – pretty clever."

"I figured the ad was coded; I thought I broke it," said Tyler.

"Yeah, well, you broke most of the code." Donovan smirked at Tyler, then opened the book up. There was writing on the margins and markings on the text on many of the pages. "Page 77… page 77," he said, flipping through the paperback until he got to the right page.

There was one handwritten note on the margin, and Donovan read the message. "Katherine Howe. It will be obvious."

He showed the message to Tyler. "Know who she is?"

"American novelist."

"I guess we're going to the Literature section after all."

Donovan and Tyler took the copy of _Candide _and left it at the librarian's desk so the staff could return it to the correct section, then went to the elevator. They ascended to the Literature & Fiction section on Level 3.

It took them about five minutes to find Katherine Howe's works on the shelves.

"Fess up, Gooder. This isn't the first time you've perused the Young Adult section, either here or at the bookstore."

Donovan ignored Tyler's jab, but then let out an audible sigh. He reached for one of Howe's books.

"Fuck," was all he said as he held out a novel titled, simply, "Conversion."


	20. Chapter 19 - On the Eleventh Night

**AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This chapter contains material that some may consider to be too graphic and/or intense depicting sexual violence. _**Reader discretion is advised.**_

**CHAPTER 19**

This is Juliet Parrish, right now:

Everything you see is whirling and spinning, and your head hurts.

Like, it really, really hurts.

A sensation of throbbing pressure pulsates just behind your eyes, and your ears are filled with this constant ringing electronic tone. You can't see clearly, and when you try to concentrate and squint to see through the blur, the pain in your head spikes.

It's so cold in this room you're in, surrounded by glassy walls of yellow and orange and white lights flashing in odd, random patterns, you can't help but shiver. At the same time, though, your nervous system seems to be running amok, because you think you can feel the tell-tale heat of each light that blinks on and off around you on your bare skin.

Not only that, but it seems as if you can taste a strange sweetness hanging in the frigid air as you breathe it in.

You look all around you, seeing nothing but a blurry variegated array of ever-shifting colors and shapes, and you are filled with dread and humiliation as you feel the weight of unseen eyes locked on to your unclothed self.

So you try to lift your feet from off the raised frustum you're standing on, but for reasons you can't fathom you are stuck in place, as if rooted to the spot. The insistent, screaming voice of the instinct to move from where you are, to somehow **escape **from this place, goes unheeded despite your best efforts to comply.

_I can't stand this._

As you finish that thought, a pained moan escapes your lips, loud enough for the sound to rise above the pervasive tone filling your ears. Thinking consciously while you're in this room always makes a burst of pain explode in your head.

It has been this way for goodness knows how long now.

Pretty much ever since you've been on the Mother Ship, really.

_And when did they capture me? A week ago? Maybe ten days now? _

_I can't remember…_

A new set of stimuli presently captures your attention as you notice some of the lights around you start to cascade down six columns, then across the floor of the room, then up onto the platform upon which you are standing. But even if you look away or close your eyes you can tell what this set of lights is doing as you can literally feel the energy they emit rain from somewhere above you, then seemingly **into** you. You look over your right shoulder, then over your left, then face forward again. At the same time, the tone in your ears changes pitch, sounding a little deeper, bigger, but not actually louder.

The blurry kaleidoscope in your eyes starts to resolve into… something else. The random flashes of colorful lights begins to transmogrify into an inky-black darkness.

You blink, unsure about what it is you're seeing.

Indeed, the only thing you're really sure of right now is…

_I'm scared_.

A corner of your mind is telling you that you recognize this specific experience. You've seen the lights in this room do this very thing, or something very much like it, not just once, but quite a few times before.

When was the last time? Yesterday, maybe? Or last night?

One thing is for sure: You truly have no idea.

You long ago lost track of time. Time has been meaningless for you ever since you were taken to the Mother Ship.

You keep blinking, not understanding why everything you see now is just that pervasive darkness.

Then you hear it.

A voice with that distinctive quaver.

_Her_ voice.

"Julie. Julie, it's Diana."

_Diana_.

"No," you respond, turning your head to your right and shutting your eyes.

But her voice is nowhere and everywhere all at once.

"Julie, just relax. Relax."

As she speaks, you suddenly become aware of your racing heart and your shallow breathing. So you do as she tells you, forcing yourself to breathe more deeply, more slowly.

And you instantly start to feel better. Like the air draining out of a punctured balloon, the sensation of pressure emanating from behind your eyes dissipates, and the world seems to slow its spinning.

"That's it, Julie. Just relax…"

_Relax._

Your eyelids are feeling heavy.

"No," you say again, but far more softly. You don't want to do as Diana's voice is telling you.

But a part of you kind of does, actually.

"That's it. Just relax." Her voice soothes and calms you.

"Relax," you whisper softly.

You let your eyes close, and you feel yourself drift aimlessly, guided only by the sound of Diana's voice.

"Relax…"

You gasp as you open your eyes again.

"Where are you, Julie?"

_What..?_

"Tell me, Julie, where are you?"

You look all around you, and at first you see nothing but the room you're in, with its flashing walls of lights and glass and the raised platform upon which you're standing. You take a breath, and the air has a new chemical smell to it that makes your head spin. You blink, and what you see morphs into a small space bordered by dark metallic brown walls illuminated with subdued lighting. You see the shelf jutting out of the back wall, and the toilet close to it, and you detect the lingering hint of human waste in the air. Another eye blink, and now you're seeing a dark hallway punctuated every few feet by green light fixtures set into the walls, exuding a creepy vibe that makes your skin crawl.

"Ship," you say, in a voice just barely above a gasping whisper. "Mother Ship…"

But her voice fills your head again.

"Tell me where you are, Julie. Where are you?"

You blink, and now you're looking through the horizontal slats of some window blinds. The wail of a police car's siren is receding in your ears. You feel beads of sweat trickle down your face and torso, though you're unsure if it's because of the humidity and temperature in the darkened room you find yourself in, or if it's because of the anxiety you're feeling.

"It's alright – I think," you say, backing away from the window through which you'd been looking. The transition from the bright mid-day sun outside to the shadows takes a second, but as you take your seat next to a dark-skinned man you're able to see and recognize the faces surrounding you.

_Ben._

Seeing him makes you glad. You love this friend.

"Alright, look," says Benjamin – Ben – Taylor. "We all know what's going on. Totalitarian suppression of the truth. And not only on television; they've got the papers, radio, online… We're under martial law."

"And paranoia," says Louise Motland, a woman sitting across from you and Benjamin. Her eyes and the lines on her face testify to her worry and fear, making her look much older than her real age of thirty five. "Everyone I know, especially scientists, is scared to death."

"Or disappearing." You and everyone look at Brad Jones, a friend of Benjamin's and a LAPD officer. "Like my old partner, or any other cop who refused to go along with the Visitors when they 'requested' that we help them maintain order."

"And yesterday they took another doctor and his family from my building," Louise adds.

"Why are they so anxious to arrest so many scientists?" asks Ben.

As you ponder his question, a bright light shines in your eyes, momentarily blinding you. When your vision returns, you find yourself face down on the ground. It stinks of tar, and small broken grains of the asphalt have dug themselves into your palms and onto your right cheek where it had been resting on the ground. You don't know how you got there, or why, but it strikes you as very strange.

That's when you feel it: An intense burning in your right hip, not just on the skin, but seemingly deep into the muscles and bone as well. Agony radiates down to your toes and up your whole right side. Your eyes water from the pain signals now flooding into your brain.

_It hurts… so much. _

You tell yourself to breathe in, as though your deep breaths could wash away and shield you from the agony overloading your senses, and you inhale thin wisps of smoke imbued with the odor of burned meat. The smell almost makes you vomit, and it takes every ounce of self-control to stop yourself from doing so.

You look up, and then you remember why you're on the ground.

Ben's crumpled form is on the ground as well, just a yard and a half away from you. Like you he has a burn wound, except his is on his chest, a couple of inches to the right of his heart.

Unlike you, he is a broken, bloody mess.

You suddenly remember: You saw him fall twenty or so feet off the second floor of the parking structure you're next to. You threw your car into a half-spin, then got out and rushed to his side, tears in your eyes, your heart pounding in your chest as you wondered how you can possibly help your friend. Then you heard the approach of boots rushing towards you, so you went against everything you'd learned in your medical classes and tried to lift him off the ground and into your car.

And that's when you got hit. The blue bolt of energy that made fire erupt in your hip where it impacted flung you back, and made you land belly-first onto the dark grey asphalt. You dropped Ben as you did so.

As you are sprawled there, paralyzed by a pain that transcends the physical plane, your mind is filled by a single thought.

_I can't give up. _

_We have to get away._

With agonizing slowness you get yourself on your feet. Your right leg is stiff and uncooperative, dragging behind you and too wracked in pain as you make your way to your broken friend. You don't know how you're able to do it, but you drag Ben into your car, pulling him up and into the front passenger seat, then coming around the rear to get into the vehicle.

He starts to gasp, trying to tell you something. You want to hear what he's saying, but you are overcome by the urge to drive and get away. But then his left hand grabs your right arm, and you look at him.

"It…" he says, his voice so weak and deathly quiet. "It's all your fault."

The words are a faint whisper, but it's not what he says which stays with you.

"It's all your fault, Julie."

It's the tone, accusatory and saturated with pain so complete it hurts you to hear it, which echoes in your mind.

His hand slides away from your arm, and you're finally able to twist the ignition and start the car. As you slam it into gear and stand on the throttle, fresh tears start to burn their way down your cheeks.

You want to deny what Ben has said.

But you can't.

Because you believe he's right.

_No._

Tears are obscuring your vision, so you blink.

When you open your eyes again you're looking down on a woman lying still on a makeshift gurney. She has multiple burn wounds – one on her upper chest, another on her left thigh – as well as small cuts on her face. Her brown hair is soaked in sweat.

You had opened up her chest to see if you could somehow perform surgery on the charred tissues of her lungs and heart. But you knew, even before starting, that there was only one likely outcome, despite all of your best efforts.

_I can't save her. She's going to die._

"Oh, Louise," you whisper softly to yourself. You look around, and your comrades – Robert Maxwell, curly-haired Harmony Moore, tall Maggie Blodgett – are all looking at you, their eyes sad.

"I can't save her," you say, your voice shaking. You avert their gazes for a moment, looking down at Louise's face. She looks so serene now, in contrast to when you started working on her a few minutes ago, when her face was a twisted, pained rictus.

You look up again at your companions, but you notice the look in their eyes is no longer sad. Any semblance of sorrow or sympathy or kindness is now gone.

In their place is anger.

Hatred.

Accusation.

You shiver when you read all this in their faces.

"It's all your fault, Julie," Harmony says through clenched teeth.

"It's all your fault," repeats Maggie. "Your fault."

Robert Maxwell steps toward you, his eyes alight. "It's your fault. You killed them!"

"No," you reply, your gaze shifting from one friend to the other. "Don't say that!"

"Yes, it is!" Maggie says as she and Harmony start to advance towards you, just behind Robert.

You start to back away. "No! Stop saying that!"

"But you know it's true," says Harmony, her voice quiet but edged with an unmistakable anger. "People are dying because of you."

Robert grabs a scalpel from a tray of surgical tools. Louise's blood is thick on the blade. "My wife, Kathleen," he says, waving the scalpel at you as he closes the distance between you two. "I lost her because of you."

You gasp as you back into the wall.

_There's nowhere to go._

"No," you protest, your gaze fixed on Robert and the scalpel in his hand. "You've got it all wrong!" You look at Harmony and Maggie now, hoping they can see the desperate plea radiating from your eyes. "Please! Don't do this – "

"My girls don't have a mother anymore," Robert says, still approaching. "All because of you."

"It's your fault, Julie," says Harmony.

"It's all your fault," Maggie echoes.

You press your hands over your ears and scream, "No! Stop saying that! It's not true!" But the three of them keep on approaching, with Robert waving the bloodied scalpel in front of him. You shut your eyes and hold your breath, waiting for him to plunge the knife into you. You become conscious of your heart beating hard and fast, making you dizzy.

But nothing happens.

The wait for that inevitable pain of the blade slicing into your flesh seems interminable, so you exhale then breathe in again. You've surrendered to your fate.

_I'm going to die. _

_Lord, please forgive me. I never wanted to hurt anyone, for anyone to get hurt because of me. _

_I hope they all forgive me. _

_I'm sorry._

But still nothing happens.

You reopen your eyes, and you find yourself holding a Heckler & Koch P30S pistol with two hands, sighting down the barrel towards a paper target fifteen meters away.

"That's it, Julie. Looking good."

You turn to your left, where you see both Brad and Mark McIntyre smiling approvingly. Like Brad, McIntyre is a LAPD officer. As you look at them, the thought enters your head – not for the first time, you realize – that the two of them could be mistaken for brothers with their dark brown wavy hair and the fact they both wear eyeglasses.

Mark's critique makes you smile.

"But not perfect," Brad says. "Remember to lean slightly forward, and don't lock your knees."

"Her form wasn't bad at all," Mark says, "especially since she's never even held a gun before."

"You're right. But I want to make sure her form and technique are as good as they can be. Her life might depend on it."

"But I have held one before," you protest, smiling.

"She has," says Brad. "This was just before you joined us, Mark."

"Hmm… well, egg on my face," Mark says, chuckling. He gestures towards the target with a nod of the head. "You wanna try it again?"

You bring the pistol up to firing position again, lining up the target down the range, then drop your arms, shaking your head. "I… I can't. I'll practice more later."

Both police officers look at you, puzzled. "What's wrong?" Brad asks finally.

"I know I should practice," you begin to say. "But I'm just having a hard time with it right now."

Silence hangs over the three of you, until Mark breaks it. "Because..?"

You sigh.

_I've dedicated my life to studying life sciences, so I can help save lives and make them better._

_But this…_ You look down at the pistol in your hands. _It's so hard to see how or where this fits in._

"I just – " You look at both Brad and Mark, returning the gun to them. "I don't want to talk about it. It's just… it's complicated."

Mark takes the gun from you, then looks at Brad. Without warning, he points it at Brad and shoots him in the head.

"No!" you scream as Brad's blood and bits of his brains and skull spatter and smear your face and torso.

Mark's face is blank as he looks at you. "It's all your fault, Julie."

"No… NO! Brad!" You crouch to hold Brad's limp body, cradling his head in your arms as it continues to leak blood. Your tears come uncontrollably now. "How could you?" you ask Mark.

"This isn't how I died, Julie. Don't you remember?" Brad says, somehow able to speak. His eyes are fixed on yours, and you're horrified at the anger in them. "But I died because of you."

"It's your fault, Julie," Mark says again.

You shut your eyes as you scream, and when you open them again you find yourself in the midst of a meeting with some of the ranking members of your resistance group. All of you have congregated in what you all call the war room.

They look disheveled, soaked in sweat and grime. You're bathed in sweat too, and you've been crying.

"We lost Brad," you tell everyone. "Tell them what happened, Mark."

"I saw him go down; he took a shot to the chest."

"Man, you sure he's dead?" Elias asks.

"He wasn't moving. I tried to go back for him, but Julie called for us to fall back." He looks at you, eyes wide with anger and alight with accusation. "He was my partner."

"You decided to leave him there?" Elias says, his eyes fixed on you, disbelieving. "Just like you did Ben, huh?"

You look at him, and then at everyone. All of them look back at you with eyes afire with anger and accusation.

"There was no choice!" you say. "I didn't want to, but we had to retreat. Otherwise we'd have all been killed too!"

"You're full of shit," Elias says. "You left Brad out there, and you let my brother die." He took a threatening step towards you, and so do the others. "Brad told me you left Ben behind. Probably just to save your own ass."

"No…" You look at all of them as they continue to press towards you. "No! You've got it all wrong! I went back for Ben!"

You back away from them, but they still keep on coming, until you find yourself up against a wall. You look towards the one exit from the war room, but find there are far too many people in the way.

Then everyone starts to speak, like a chorus. "It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you. It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you. It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you."

The chant echoes in your ears even when you press your palms hard into them, hoping to keep the accusatory mantra away.

But they keep on saying it.

"It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you. It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you. It's all your fault, Julie. We're dying because of you."

"No!"

Guilt now holds your heart in a grip so tight, it feels like your whole chest will explode.

_I never wanted anyone to get killed. I never wanted to leave anyone behind. _

_But we had to._

_There was no choice!_

_Otherwise we would have lost more people._

And as you rationalize your decisions within yourself, your friends continue their inexorable advance. Each one of them has murder in their eyes.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"

"Julie." Diana's voice intrudes into your consciousness, directly into your mind it seems. The voice is so familiar to you by now. "Julie, they want to hurt you."

_No. No!_

"They blame you, Julie, for all of their loved ones being killed. They want to hurt you to avenge their loved ones."

"No!"

"Do you remember what happens whenever people die, Julie?

"Their anger just keeps growing and growing. The more of your people's loved ones die, the angrier they become.

"The more they want to hurt you.

"And they will always hurt you."

You look at Elias and the rest of your friends. They're so close now, just about four feet away.

There's nowhere to go.

Fear – terror – has mixed in with the guilt that has tightened the noose around your heart.

Malice and the intent to really hurt you are radiating from the people who have now surrounded you like the lethal, all-consuming energy from a malevolent star.

You close your eyes, as if doing so would somehow protect you.

All it does is make it seem her voice is even louder and more pervasive than ever.

"They want to hurt you, Julie. They are about to hurt you now; they will always hurt you."

_No! This never happened. _

_THIS NEVER HAPPENED!_

"No! It's a lie! It's all a lie!"

You scream, trying to drown out that voice speaking into your mind, wishing that everything could just end now.

"It's all a lie!"

_It has to be._

_It HAS to be._

_Please._

"Please…" you whimper. "Please… it's a lie."

And that's what you want, for everything to be a lie. There is nothing that you want more, at any time in your life, than for this all to just be a wicked lie. You are desperate for it to be a lie.

You blink, and when your eyes reopen, you don't see your friends and comrades in the rebellion anymore. You don't hear their accusatory chanted mantra. You don't hear _her_ voice in your head.

_Stay in the moment. _

_Breathe._

You look down at yourself, and you see your bare skin covered with goose bumps. Despite the coldness of where you are, you are coated in your perspiration. Your lungs are starved of air, and your heart is a trip-hammer going crazy, pounding hard and way too fast. And though you've just been standing there, it feels like all of your muscles are on fire from over-exertion.

Though the moment – each moment, as it passes – is filled with so much pain, you derive a precious crumb of comfort as you live each one, a kernel of wisdom and understanding.

_This is real._

_The pain in my heart, and everywhere – it's _real.

_It hurts so much, but it's all real._

_It's all real._

You look straight ahead, fixating on your own shadowy reflection on the huge piece of glass in front of you. The periphery of your vision is still a kaleidoscope of ever-changing flashes of orange, white, and yellow, but you just stare at what's directly in front of you.

Then the world starts to change again.

_It's getting… colder in here. _

You can't believe it. As cold as the temperature in the room had already been, the temperature is definitely dropping, making you shiver even more. And as the air gets even colder, a mist hisses out from vents all around you, condensing into a visible cloud that envelops you.

The air, cold as it enters your nostrils, is moist and has a new odor to it, and your skin tingles as it interacts with the condensing mist that it comes into contact with. Your shivers turn into larger tremors, and before long you can't stop yourself from shaking as you stand there. You hug yourself now, tight, and you begin to think that perhaps this is all a prelude to dying.

_I can't take this anymore._

_It's too much._

You moan, your agony and discomfort now going far beyond any limits you thought had existed beforehand. Many of your muscles start to spasm and contract uncontrollably, and the pressure and pain in your head likewise expands past anything you remember ever experiencing at any time in your life. Your eyeballs feel as if they've got the points of daggers pressing into them from the inside, and your ears are still ringing with a high-pitched, high-intensity tone that makes you believe your eardrums are going to burst.

_I'm dying._

_I must be dying._

_I guess it's okay if I just die now. _

_It just hurts too much_

Then you find yourself bathed in a blue-white light that seems to be coming from everywhere you look. The light is warm, a stark contrast to the arctic coldness of the room. As the seconds turn into minutes, the light seems to permeate even the air, seemingly endowing it with warmth, giving you some measure of relief from the torturous cold.

Eventually your body's tremors cease, and you're able to drop your hands down to your sides. You sigh as you find yourself relaxing.

Then you hear Diana speak to you again.

"Julie? Julie, how do you feel?"

"No," you say, your voice meek and quiet. You don't want to answer; you don't even want to hear her voice at all.

But you do. And you hear her ask again.

"Julie, tell me, how do you feel?"

As you listen to her ask you again, the question asked with so much gentleness, you find yourself thinking, _she cares. _

_She cares about me._

You sigh again, and you tilt your head back. Your eyes are closed, and you just feel so calm and relaxed. Something in you is imploring you to ignore her voice.

_No, she doesn't. _

_Don't listen to her._

But you also feel an irresistible compulsion to answer her question.

"Good," you say, your voice a breathy whisper. "I feel good."

"That's it, Julie. Just relax."

_Relax._

"I'm so tired," you say.

"I know you're tired, Julie. You're very, very tired."

You say nothing, but you definitely agree with her.

_Tired… so tired._

"And you've been in so much pain."

You've been hurting so much, for what seems like forever, wracked with agony that transcends far beyond the physical plane.

"Yes," you whisper.

But there is something you cannot deny.

Hearing her voice somehow makes you feel better.

Listening to her makes the pain you feel ebb away.

And you think you know why.

_When she speaks to me I'm not so alone and lonely._

_I'm so afraid of being lonely._

_I _hate_ being lonely._

_She hasn't left me. She hasn't left me alone._

"Just relax, Julie," she tells you. "I want you to just relax, and to listen to me.

"You feel good when you listen to me, don't you, Julie?"

Again you feel that tug-of-war within you, the conflict between wanting to ignore her and needing to answer her. You bite down on your lower lip and hold your breath, but after fighting that urge to not respond, you nod stiffly.

"Yes," you gasp .

"Good, Julie. Now, tell me –

"What happens when you're with your comrades in the rebellion?"

"No," you say.

_Don't listen to her._

The pain builds up again as soon as you say it – as soon as you think it. Your body starts to shake as your muscles spasm and cramp up, and the sensation of pressure starts to grow in your head again. The room starts to whirl and spin, and before long you feel like you need to vomit, as if doing so would give you at least some relief.

You close your eyes, and you find that when you stop trying to think, it seems to make all the hurt shrink away.

"Just relax, Julie."

_Relax. _

_It doesn't hurt as much when you just let yourself go…_

"Relax."

Everything feels so heavy now. Not unpleasantly so; if anything, you feel like you're falling asleep.

When you open your eyes again, everything is dark. Panic seizes you for the briefest moment, but the feeling subsides quickly. You feel the weight of bedding over you, and you enjoy the warmth it endows. You're not sure about where you are, but given just how good everything feels right now, you find yourself not really caring about such details.

All you know is that you haven't felt this good since…

_Well… I don't actually remember, to be honest._

But you don't care about that, or about anything at all.

You shift position slightly, and only now do you register the multiple lumps in the thin, narrow mattress.

_Ah… I'm at headquarters._

The feeling of familiarity only gives you more comfort, so you take a deep, cleansing breath and sigh, content. You close your eyes and try to go back to sleep.

As you lie there, you hear something.

The sound is strange, muffled, barely audible. At first you wonder whether or not you're imagining things. But the strange muffled sound comes and goes, not quite rhythmically, but it definitely repeats. It doesn't sound like a machine, but you're not sure if the source is organic either. You concentrate and focus on what your ears are picking up.

_It sounds like… somebody breathing._

You throw the covers off of you and feel for the switch on the lamp just next to your tiny cot, set on a small desk. The light doesn't turn on, though. _Hmm. Must be a dead bulb._ You get up. The floor is cold under your bare feet, but you don't mind it too much as you feel your way in the darkness towards the door, which is just a couple of arm lengths away.

When you feel the door with your hands, you press your ear onto it.

_Yep. I can still hear it, whatever it is._

You open the door and step out into the hallway.

_That's weird_, you think. _It's not usually dark through here._

_Maybe we had a blackout or something._

Then you hear the sound again. Now it's a lot clearer.

_Yup. Definitely someone breathing hard. _

_Is someone doing a workout in the dark?_

"Hello?" you call out.

The sound stops.

"Hello? Is anybody there? Is the power out?"

You wait for a reply. The silence that answers back unnerves you somewhat.

Then the sound starts again.

But still no answer.

_Weird._

You decide to follow the sound. It seems to be coming from somewhere to your left.

_Whoever it is, he sounds like he's working hard._

You put your hand to the wall, letting it guide you as you follow the sound back to its source. You're going slowly, as the darkness is absolute and perfect. But with every step, the sound keeps getting incrementally louder.

It takes about two minutes, but you turn a corner to the left. The heavy breathing is even louder.

_Getting close. _

_I wonder who it is._

Suddenly, the sound stops again.

You freeze in place.

"Hello?"

No reply, as ever.

Then the heavy breathing begins anew.

Your heart starts to pound in your chest, its increasing tempo and intensity echoing in your ears. You start to inch forward again, still using your hand on the wall to your left to guide your way in the perfect darkness.

Then you hit something directly ahead of you. Strangely, your feet didn't hit anything, but your nose and chest definitely hit something. You move your hands in front of you now, and you feel a wall there, albeit one that stops right about where your waist is.

_What is this? _

_I don't remember this._

You get on your hands and knees, crouching under this strange section of wall, and continue to follow the sound of breathing.

_Whoever it is, he's real close now. He must be just on the other side._

You've only gone a foot or so, when a warm, viscous, and sticky fluid splashes onto your face. At the same moment, you hear a man in front of you grunt in release.

You recoil and scream, as much as from surprise as from disgust.

Some of the stuff gets on your lips, into your mouth and into your nostrils. Most of it lands on your eyelids. You feel some of it get into your hair, too.

Then unseen hands – you feel three of them – grab at your arms as you try to wipe the nasty goop from your face.

"No!"

The hands pull you forward, brutally dragging you on your knees and shins. You try to get to your feet, but then another powerful hand clamps down onto your shoulder, near your neck, preventing you from standing.

"Stay down," a harsh voice from behind you says. "On your knees. Don't fight me."

You scream again, and renew your efforts to get up on your feet. "No! Let me go!"

_This guy sounds familiar._

"Mark?"

He doesn't answer, but whoever is holding you down is far too strong. And while he holds you down, the people who had grabbed your arms now twist them back behind you. They pull your hands a bit upward, forcing your shoulders back and your chest out. You feel two of the hands let go, but even just the one hand still clamped on your wrists is more than enough to keep you restrained.

Tears start to fall down your face. "Stop, please," you beg, wincing as you do. "You're hurting me."

"That's the idea," the man who sounds like Mark says into your right ear. You know by feel that he is holding on to your wrists.

More of the goop drips onto your lips, so you spit it out. You shake your head to and fro, hoping to dislodge the stuff, but it is sticky and clings to your face as it mingles with your tears on their journey down your cheeks.

Then you hear several men laugh. You can't see them because of the darkness and because you dare not open your eyes for fear of getting the nasty discharge into your eyes, but from the sound of things it seems like there are at least five of them.

"What's the matter?" one of them asks with a distinctly Mexican accent. He's standing over you, just to your left. "You don't like that makeup I put on you?"

_He sounds so familiar too._

"Sancho?"

His words just twist the knife of humiliation stuck into your soul, and you start to sob.

Then you feel an intense heat shine down on you. A harsh bright light bleeds through your shut eyelids, and you wonder where it's coming from, and why it's focused on you.

"Now, honey," says another man, "I'm going to open my fly, and you're going to open your pretty little mouth." The others laugh. "We're going to have ourselves a party."

"No," you say, and you struggle again, raw panic gripping you as you understand his lascivious intentions.

Then you feel something hard and cold press against your left temple.

"I think you'd better change your mind," yet another man says, his basso voice rich and deep. "Or someone's gonna have to come in here and clean up what's left of it."

_I think I know this guy too._

"Caleb, please!"

An unseen hand crashes into your right cheek.

"Do you want me to hurt you more?" asks the man in front of you. "Do you want to die?"

Sobbing, you shake your head. Resigned to your fate, you settle on your knees, sitting down on your calves.

The men around you chuckle again, then you hear the tell-tale sound of a zipper opening.

_He stinks,_ you think to yourself, gagging at the odors wafting into your nostrils. You open your mouth just to breathe.

"Hey," the man who sounds like Mark McIntyre says from behind you. "You didn't even have to tell her to open up." The rest of the men laugh again. "I guess she really wants it."

Something touches your slightly parted lips, and you quickly turn your head away, disgusted. A hand clamps down onto your face, the powerful fingers digging into your cheeks.

"It's showtime," the man in front of you says. He bats his erect phallus into your face. "No time for stage fright now."

He presses his fingers harder into your cheeks, and you can't help but open your mouth wider still.

"No teeth," he says. "If I feel any, you're dead. You get me?"

You nod. He releases his painful clutch on your face, and you keep your mouth open.

"Time to party."

With that he pushes himself into your mouth. At first you instinctively try to use your tongue to stop him from raping your mouth, but all it does is allow you to taste him.

You gag at the salty-bitterness, and you struggle to pull away from him. But the man holding your wrists behind your back shoves you forward, which forces the man inside your mouth to plunge even deeper. Before long saliva is leaking out of your mouth, dripping off your chin and drenching your shirt and chest.

The man inside your mouth then grabs the back of your head, wraps his fingers into your hair, and pulls you towards him. His raping appendage is now going into the back of your mouth, past your tonsils.

_Can't… can't breathe._

You renew your struggles, ignoring the pain in your shoulders and scalp as you try to wriggle free from both men holding you.

_Need… to breathe…_

You're getting lightheaded from the lack of air. You think you're going to pass out, when the mouth rapist suddenly slackens his wrist and relaxes his grip on your hair. Your head snaps back, and you suck in the air greedily. Then you cough and spit, desperate to purge his foul taste from your mouth.

"Not bad," the man in front of you says. Although he sounds so familiar, you just can't identify whose voice it is. "You look all sweet and innocent-like, but I think you do this all the time." He spits on you. "You took me away from my wife, but I never did this with her. I'm glad you and I can party."

The rest of the men around you chuckle, and your cheeks burn not just from the tears that have been falling for minutes now, but more from the flush of humiliation and degradation from this latest barb.

Then you feel a thumb press on your eyes. You recoil, but the man behind you pushes you forward.

"Stop moving, damn it," says the man who raped your mouth. "Settle down." You feel the barrel of the gun on your forehead again.

You compel yourself to stop struggling. Satisfied, he puts a thumb on your eyes again, and though you feared him pressing down on them and possibly blinding you, he wipes the goop off them instead. But you keep your eyes shut as the light is still way too bright on you.

You never see him backhand you, but the slap is strong enough to make you yelp in pain and surprise.

"Now," he says, "you're going to open your pretty little mouth again, and you're also going to open those pretty blue eyes of yours." He slaps you again, not as hard, but just as degrading.

"I said open your eyes," he says more firmly.

"Maybe she likes it when she gets hit," the man who sounds like Caleb says.

"Nah," the man who violated you replies. "She's not that brave.

"Isn't that right, sweetheart?"

You hear the click of the hammer on the gun being pulled, and just the sound of it is enough for you to open your eyes at last.

"That's it. Now," he says as he steps closer to you again, "let's see how quickly you can get me off."

With that he pushes himself back into your mouth. You see him pass the handgun to someone to his right, then he grabs your head with both hands.

"Keep her covered," he says, grunting as he thrust in and out of your mouth.

It's clear to you he is enjoying himself.

You, on the other hand, are not.

He is punching the inside of your mouth, going in and out like an over-revving piston in an engine, and your jaw muscles are rapidly approaching the point of exhaustion just from the effort to keep your mouth open as wide as possible. You are ever-mindful of his warning: "No teeth, or I'll blow your brains out."

_I hate this._

Then, in the midst of your dehumanizing suffering, you hear Diana again.

"I know you hate this, Julie."

You don't know if it's caring or cruel of her to echo your own thoughts so precisely.

"But this is what they want."

As ever, something inside you tells you to ignore her voice, but you still hear her; her words still penetrate into your mind. You try to distract yourself, so you look up. You don't want to, but to see your rapist's face would give you something else to think about. But although you can feel, hear and taste everything right now, for some strange reason you cannot see his face. All you can see of it are the frames of his eyeglasses and his dark hair.

"That's it," you hear him grunt. "Look at me. And know you took me away from my family."

_He keeps saying that. _

_Why?_

Then the memory of a conversation you had just a few weeks ago enters your mind.

It was between you and Fred King, just a couple of weeks before you and your group raided the Los Angeles Medical Center.

Your group needed medical supplies, and Fred, with whom you had taken pre-med classes for a couple of terms a few years ago, helped you gain access to one of the Los Angeles Medical Center's medical supply rooms.

"Don't ask me to do this again, Julie." He had said then.

"We can't guarantee that, Fred."

"They're tightening security. It's getting too dangerous."

"It's no picnic for us either."

"Yeah, but I'm not a resistance fighter. I'm a doctor."

"We need doctors, Fred. We need you."

"I'm getting too scared; I've got a family."

_Fred._

You blink, and you look up at the man raping your mouth. Now you can see his face.

It _is_ Fred, but his face is charred, blackened, disfigured, grotesque.

You remember him driving the ambulance you hoped to escape the hospital in. You know he had crashed the ambulance, after you heard the pulsing whine of a Visitor weapon discharging. You never got to look into the driver's cab after the ambulance crashed, but you know that Fred got killed, either by a Visitor weapon hitting him or because of the crash.

_I'm sorry._

_I'm so sorry._

"That's right," he says, smiling down at you. "It's me, Julie. And what's happening is all your fault." He stops thrusting for a moment, then pushes in as deeply as he could.

His member in your throat is cutting off your air again, and you try to thrash anew.

"I'm part of your group now," he says, which makes everyone around you laugh. "Happy?"

You then feel someone's hands go beneath the hem of your top, settling on your breasts. Cruel fingers start to massage them, lingering on your nipples, then give them a rough and painful squeeze.

"No bra," says Mark. "I always knew you were a slut." He takes his hands off of you, then rips your shirt apart with ease, exposing your torso. "This is why I joined this outfit in the first place."

"When we're done with round one, maybe you ought to give her a thorough strip search," Caleb says.

Everyone starts laughing at your degradation again, when Diana speaks to you. "Why do you fight, Julie? Why lead all these people? Your cause means nothing to them.

"Moreover, _YOU_ mean nothing to them."

You feel hands on your breasts again.

"Come on, fellas!" Mark yells. "She's open for business!"

_No… _

_NO!_

Fred pulls out a little bit, then starts thrusting in and out as before.

"You are nothing but a plaything for them to enjoy," Diana says directly into your mind.

You don't want to believe her, but now you see the other men begin to crowd around you in an ever-tightening circle.

Every single one is not wearing any pants. And every single one of them is holding a cellphone, each one pointed at you.

All except for one of them. The one exception, you only now realize, is holding a professional-grade video camera, upon which is mounted the bright light shining in your eyes. He just shifts position, allowing some of the men to get closer to you.

_They're filming this._

_They're all filming this!_

Your heart is racing harder than ever. As bad as being orally raped and having your breasts molested are, the very thought of all these men recording your violation and degradation is more than you can endure.

_I can't handle this anymore._

_I can't._

_I CAN'T._

It's at that moment you realize that for Mark to fondle your breasts, he had to have freed your arms. The realization brings a fresh explosion of headache, but the elation of knowing your hands are now free compensates for it.

Without thinking, you grab and squeeze Fred's testicles as hard as you can. It produces the desired result, and he screams in pain as he pulls out of your mouth, doubling over and crashing into his cohorts who have closed that circle around you. Thanks to the light on the camera you're able to see the opening, and you dash away, crawling under the open bottom section of wall you'd found by accident earlier.

Mark is the first to react to your escape, and you feel him grab your ankle. But you kick him with your other foot, and you feel glass and metal crack and crumple under your sole, even as you hear his painful exclamation.

"She's getting away!"

You don't look back, running with an arm covering your chest, wet from all of the drool that dripped out when you were being orally raped.

But you can hear them scurrying under that wall now, then getting to their feet and chasing after you.

_It's so dark. I can't see._

_But I can't let them get me._

_I can't._

_I CAN'T._

But even as you run blindly through the darkness, a voice inside you implores you to listen to it. It is the voice of reason, a voice you've been listening to for all of your life. All of these horrors you're living have drowned it out.

But now it is speaking to you.

_Don't panic. _

_You're at headquarters. You ought to know this place since this has been your home for the last few months now.._

"You can't get away!" Caleb calls out to you. "It's useless to run!"

_Don't listen to them._

Terror and dread squeeze your heart in a painful grip as you hear the echoes of their feet chase after you.

_They're getting closer._

"Stop running!" Fred yells at you. "You won't get away anyway!"

_DON'T LISTEN TO THEM._

You keep running down the halls, not seeing where you're going and still relying on a hand on the wall to guide you as you go.

Suddenly you crash into something in front of you.

It turns out to be some_one_.

His powerful arms wrap around you, lifting you bodily off the floor and throwing you into the wall. This stuns you, and you fall down.

You feel his weight pin you down, his hot breath on your neck, a hand cupping your left breast.

"No!"

"Is this what you want?" Diana asks you. "Is this what you want, Julie?"

"No!'

You ball up your fists and strike at the man pinning you down, but although this hurts your hands as you hit his hard, muscled body, it's clear to you that it's not affecting him at all.

"Is this what you want, Julie?"

"No… no!"

_I don't want this._

_I don't want this._

You see nothing. The darkness is perfect.

But you feel everything. His hot breath on your skin. The terrible weight keeping you in place, unable to move. His hard muscles, telling you just how much stronger he is compared to you. His hand cupping your breast. The heat of his body, pressed hard against your own. Even the bulge that is growing as it presses against your crotch.

And you hear everything. His hard breathing, not from exertion, but from excitement, his lust-filled anticipation. You just know it from the sound of it. The sounds of footsteps in pursuit almost on top of you. Your own whimpers, borne from fear of what will happen next. The rapid drumbeat of your heart in your ears.

And you smell everything. The pungency of sweat. The odor of dust in the air. Mark's foul stink sticking in your nostrils.

_I DON'T WANT THIS._

"This is what they want," says Diana, the sympathy you hear and feel in her voice giving the alien quaver in it a plea for you to keep listening to her.

"They want to hurt you, Julie."

_No._

"NO!"

_I don't want this._

His weight is crushing you, and you can hardly move. You feel for his face with your hands, and you dig your fingernails into his cheek.

And you suddenly see an older man's face in front of you. He is dressed all in red. Your fingers are sinking into what feels like skin, but isn't. You're grabbing at that false skin with your fingertips and you're pulling, revealing greenish black scales underneath. The scales feel moist, slightly sticky, but although this repulses you somewhat you keep on tugging on the false skin over them until you see two half-faces: one looks human, while the other does not.

You blink, and you're back in the darkness pinned underneath a man whose intentions have so far been unspoken but have been all too obvious.

You feel him shift above you, and hear a zipper opening.

And you feel his fingers dig into the waistband of your sweatpants, pulling them down slowly…

_I DON'T WANT THIS._

You don't know why, but you feel compelled to turn your gaze towards your feet. At first all you see is darkness, but then it morphs into images of yourself enveloped in a blue-white mist.

When all you see is the darkness, you feel that great weight crushing you, as well as the feeling of clothes on your skin. Then when see your body surrounded by that mist and that all-pervading blue light.

The shifting sensations and images transition from moment to moment. The only constant, really, is the massive and ever-growing pain radiating from your every nerve to your brain.

_What's real? _

_What's not?_

_I'm going crazy. I'm going crazy._

"You don't exist!" you scream. "You don't exist! You're not there! You're a mind game!"

Every fiber of your being – your heart, your mind, your very soul – is desperate to believe what you're screaming now.

"You're just a stupid mind game!"

You put this thought you are so desperate to believe on a loop in your mind.

_You don't exist! You're not there! You're a mind game!_

_You're just a stupid mind game!_

You lay still, grimacing from the hot heavy weight pressing down upon your body. It's a bit hard to breathe, but you keep your focus not on this, but on what you keep on telling yourself.

_You don't exist! You're not there! You're a mind game!_

_You're just a stupid mind game!_

Then, suddenly, you don't feel him pinning you down anymore. Nor do you feel his hot breath on your bare skin. Instead you feel nothing but a weird sensation of both pleasant warmth and painful cold on your skin.

You don't hear the approaching footfalls of the other men chasing after you. Instead you hear that persistent, ever-present tone in your ears.

And you don't see the darkness. Instead you see nothing but yourself standing in the midst of a cloudy mist bathed in a shimmering sea of blue.

You keep on repeating that thought in your head – _You don't exist! You're not there! You're a mind game! You're just a stupid mind game! – _and find that as long as you do, it pulls you back and keeps you rooted to the here and now.

_I need something real._

_I need something real._

_I NEED SOMETHING REAL._

Then you realize that if there's anything that keeps you anchored to the present moment, it is pain. Real pain.

Somehow you can tell the difference between the pain you know is real – the pain in your heart, the pain of cramping and spasming muscles, the pain in your head – and the pain that exists only in the sick fantasies come to life in your mind.

So you bite the back of your hands, the right one first, then the left. You bite down until you draw blood from them. The pain from the self-inflicted wounds throbs in time with every beat of your heart, but it is enough to let you know that you're standing in the middle of this room, tired out of your mind, and seemingly every single one of your nerves pulsating with pain signals.

Then the blue light disappears. You start to shiver almost immediately as the comforting warmth that accompanied it gives way to the already cold air in the room.

Another blue light appears from somewhere above you. Whereas previously it had been an all-encompassing presence, this blue light manifests itself as a single shaft that hits a point about two feet in front of your toes.

You keep your eyes on that shaft of light, tilting your head up, trying to follow it to its point of origin, when it starts to revolve around you. So you follow its path as it crosses from your right to your left, disappearing past the limits of your peripheral vision then reappearing on the other side, then crossing over in front of you as before.

The light's revolutions around you gradually increase in speed. At first you're able to follow it easily, but as time goes by the blue shaft is moving so fast around you that you don't see a single distinct beam.

Now it looks like a curtain of blue light, moving as if blown by an invisible breeze.

And the more you watch the light, the dizzier you get.

_I can't take much more of this._

Everything around you is whirling like crazy, worsening the nausea you already feel. So you close your eyes, hoping that cutting yourself off from the visual stimuli overwhelming your brain would provide some relief. To your chagrin, though, doing so does not attenuate the sensation of the universe spinning out of control one bit.

"No…" you gasp feebly. "Help me, please."

Your abdominal walls and diaphragm now start to contract involuntarily, and the muscle spasms are enough to make you bend over, dry-heaving. Yet this does not relieve your nausea nor your dizziness.

_You wanted pain._

_You wanted it to be real._

_You've got more than you've ever felt in your life._

_And it's all real._

"Help me, please," you say again. You are shocked at how pathetic your voice sounds as you plead for relief to –

_Who can hear me? Who can help me now?_

_I feel so damn lonely._

This realization – that you are so alone and abandoned – slices open the wound in your psyche even further, making it bleed and throb ever worse.

_There's nobody left. _

_Everyone's left me._

_There's no one here to help me._

A pair of tears, hot against the coldness of your skin, burn their way down your face. Despite all the pain you are feeling, the heat from these falling tears stands out.

You dry-heave again, this time just barely keeping down the acidic vomitous eruption that has found its way into your throat.

Then you hear the best sound you've heard in a long time.

"Julie," Diana calls out to you. "I'm going to make all that pain go away."

_No._

_Don't listen to her._

You look around, trying to see if you can see her who is speaking to you through the blue curtain of light that surrounds and entrances you.

"I'm here to help."

_Yes… YES! Help me!_

_DON'T LISTEN TO HER._

"Come to me; reach out to me."

You can't see where she is, but just hearing her voice – listening to what she's telling you – is enough to heal some of the pain that defines your universe now.

_Reach out… reach out to you._

You don't know where she is, but your arms start to rise from where they are by your sides. They inch up, slowly, inexorably, and as they do it feels like the pain is also ebbing away.

"I want to help you, Julie. Let me help you."

Your arms are still inching upwards when you catch sight of them in front of you.

"No!"

The wounds on the back of both of your hands explode in pain again as you pull your arms back. You stare at your palms for a few moments before turning your hands over, again biting down onto the already-damaged skin and drawing fresh blood.

"This is real," you gasp. "This is real. This is real!"

You let your hands drop down to your sides again, letting your mind focus on the throbbing coming from them.

_This pain is my companion. _

_I don't feel so alone._

Then Diana speaks to you again.

"Julie, tell me, when was the first time you were abandoned?

"Tell me, Julie."

_Don't listen to her!_

"Tell me."

You close your eyes, determined to not listen to her voice. But as soon as your eyes close you off from the world, you enter another.

It's warm out today, but not unpleasantly so.

You breathe in, and the sweet smell of grass in the springtime and the various flowers around you all in bloom fill your mind.

It makes you smile.

You're out at a park playing with your friends Jenny and Susie Becker, twins who lived just down the street from your own home. They're seven, just one year older than you, but they've taken to you like you're their younger sister. Like so many times before you're out on a play date with them, watched by their mom, Rhonda. As usual the plan is for you to go home with them, where, at around six thirty in the evening, either your mom or your dad would come pick you up.

You look around, and there are quite a few people at the park. You've never been to this one before; it opened up just a week or so ago. You've been excited to come here, to try out the new jungle gym, swings, and slides. You were so happy when your mom told you that today you were finally going to go to the new park.

But as you search all the faces, you find that you don't recognize anybody.

"Jenny? Susie?" you call out. "Mrs. Becker?"

But no matter where you look or how loudly you call out their names, you can't find them.

You think about going home by yourself. It's not that far, just four blocks away. You're pretty sure you know the way back home. You know you'd recognize all the different houses and other visual landmarks that you always see when momma or daddy drove around with you in the car; you've always been looking out the car window, just taking the world in as you go.

The thought occurs to you that maybe you ought to ask someone – anyone – for help. But your parents' admonitions ring pretty loud and clear in your mind: "Don't talk to strangers, Julie."

So you choose to walk home.

You decide you want to walk by the new houses being built two blocks from the park. There's something about the new houses that fascinates you. You can't help but wonder if your own home was once like these new ones; you imagine that it did. Or maybe your fascination comes from the fact you've been watching those empty plots of land transform into an actual house. Whatever it is, it takes you away from the most direct route to home.

You're about a block away from the new houses when you get that unmistakable, unsettling feeling that you are being followed.

You look over your shoulder.

And sure enough, you see him.

You know him.

You don't like him.

You don't like the way you feel whenever he's around, whenever he looks at you.

The way he's looking at you now.

You remember the times when he would hug you, and you never liked the way his hugs felt.

It always felt wrong whenever he was around.

"Julie," he calls out.

You break into a run. You turn to look behind you, and he has started to run as well.

"Julie," he calls out again. He is closer to you now. Almost a full block away when you started running, he's cut the distance in half.

He's a lot bigger than you, and he runs much faster than you. You think quickly, and decide that you'll hide in one of the new houses being built.

You get in through the door, run up the stairs, and squeeze yourself into a closet in one of the unfinished rooms. Thankfully it has its door already installed, so you slide it closed.

"Julie," he calls once more, his voice coming from downstairs. It is laced with a certain intent you can't quite identify, but you instinctively feel and know is just wrong. "Where are you, girl?"

For a minute or so you hear nothing. Then the boards on the stairs start to creak as he makes his way to the second floor. "I know you're up here."

You hold your breath, afraid that he would hear you if you did so much as breathe, and curl yourself up into a small ball.

That's when you discover you've got a problem.

_I really need to pee._

You'd been holding it in for a while; you thought you'd hang on until you got to the Beckers' house and you could use their restroom.

Obviously you can't do that now.

"Come on out. I just want to have fun with you." His voice is louder now, and it's almost enough for you to let go.

The sounds of wooden flooring protesting under his feet stops. You know he has stopped at the doorway into the bedroom you're in despite not being able to see him.

"Julie," he says, his voice so loud now it echoes in your mind. "I know you're here somewhere. Just come on out."

To your horror you feel the floor under you move. It's a tiny movement, but you know that he has entered the bedroom and is walking towards where you are.

The door to the closet slides open.

And there he is.

You gasp, and you feel the warm wetness spread down your legs as you lose control.

"Aww, you've pissed yourself," he taunts, his face looking like a cat's that's caught up with a mouse.

He looks like a giant as he looms over you. You think about trying to escape, but he has blocked the way out of the closet.

"No!" you scream as he reaches down for you. You slap away at his hands, but as tiny as you are compared to him the gesture is as laughable as it is ineffective.

Just like a python wrapping itself around its prey, his arm coils around your waist. He then lifts you easily out of the closet.

"Let's get rid of these wet things," he says as he tugs on your shorts. You try to kick him, but he's way too big, way too strong. You're a mosquito stinging an elephant.

He puts you down on the floor and holds your wrists in one hand, pushing them down on your belly. You're still trying to kick him with your unencumbered legs, but you can't reach him, now that he has knelt down beside you.

"Stop squirming," he says. He then presses down hard on your stomach, which not only hurts, but also makes it hard to breathe. "If you relax, you won't get hurt." He looks down at you, his eyes boring into yours. "You understand?"

Too afraid to get hurt, too afraid of him, you nod meekly.

"Good. Now," he says as he pulls your panties off, "we're finally going to have some fun."

Your heart is going so hard and fast, you can practically feel its manic thumping throughout your entire body. At first you watch his free hand as it starts to make its way to between your legs, but just before he touches you you close your eyes.

"You're breathing so hard and fast, girl," he says to you as you wait for his hand. "Just relax."

You try to do as he says, but it's no use. You're getting dizzy from hyperventilating.

_I'm so scared._

_Please don't hurt me. Please._

Then you feel his fingers on you, lingering on a part of your body that nobody has ever touched in the same way as he is doing now, and you squeeze your legs together. You want to scream, but you're far too afraid.

He just laughs at you as he forces your legs apart.

"That wasn't so bad, was it? Did it feel good?"

You can't do anything but whimper, and you start to cry quietly as you feel his hand on you again.

This time he's a little bit more forceful, pressing down and moving his hand in random directions. His finger touches a certain part of you, and you gasp in surprise as the nerves there send their signals straight to your brain.

You don't understand what he's doing, or why you feel the way you do, but instinctively you know it's wrong.

_No. No._

_I _hate_ this._

You gasp, then yelp as you feel one of his fingers go inside you.

"I bet you're enjoying this, huh, Julie?" he says as he pushes his finger deeper into you.

_No!_

The area between your legs feels like a knife is slicing through it, and you imagine his finger to be a big, fat, disgusting worm moving around inside you. Again you squeeze your legs together, but nothing you do makes him stop.

If anything, he makes it worse by turning his hand and curling his finger inside of you.

"Stop," you beg. "Please! It hurts."

But he doesn't stop. He lets go of your arms and pulls your shirt up and runs his fingernails on your skin. You can't help but shiver at his touch.

"Please stop," you beg again.

He continues to ignore you. You just lie there and weep silently until, many minutes later, he finally stops. He smiles down at you, then reaches for your underwear and shorts. They are still wet when he drops them onto your belly.

"That was fun," he says. "I've been waiting forever to do that to you, Julie."

You curl yourself into a ball and cry, facing away from him.

"Maybe we can do that again, hopefully soon."

He moves your wet shorts and underwear closer to your face. You stay still.

"Don't tell anyone about this," he warns. "If you do, remember, I know where you live." He puts his hand on your butt, rubbing it then squeezing it. "You or your mommy and daddy might get hurt if you tell anyone."

You slap his hand without looking at him, just wishing he would go away. He gives you another squeeze, one last touch between the legs, then gets up from the floor.

"See you around, kiddo."

He walks out of the room and down the stairs, while you stay where you are, still curled up tight, crying. You don't know how long you stay there, but the whole time your heart is just beating like crazy.

And it hurts. It hurts so bad.

You close your eyes. When you open them again, you find yourself sitting in a bed that's not your own. You're in a gown you've never worn before, wrapped in a blue flannel blanket you've never seen before.

The panic that explodes within you at that moment only makes the pain in your chest worse. Then you become aware of your mother's tight embrace.

"Momma."

"It's okay," she tells you. "It's okay, Julie."

You look at her, her face the very picture of kindness. You've always imagined that you would grow up to be just like her, to look just like her, so beautiful and gentle and loving. Daddy always said you were your momma's mini-me. You are filled with warmth and comfort as she holds you tight.

"Momma," you say again, your voice so small and quiet. Your arms tighten around her.

"It's okay, Julie," she reassures you. "You're going to be alright."

Your eyes shift from your mother's face, and you take in the unfamiliar surroundings.

"You're in the hospital," she explains. "Dr. Runquist says you're going to be alright."

Just then two men and a woman file into the room. One of them is your father. By their clothes, you can tell that the woman, dressed in a white coat over her colorful blouse and black slacks, is a doctor, while the other man is a police officer.

"Julie," your dad, Thomas, rushes to you. He gives you a tight, comforting hug. "You okay, pumpkin?"

You give him a kiss on the cheek and nod.

"That's my girl."

Your mom squeezes your hand. "This is Officer Frentzen," she says. "And that pretty lady is Dr. Runquist."

"Hi, Julie," Dr. Runquist says, her voice soft and low. "Your parents tell me you're a brave girl. How old are you?"

You look at your mom, not wanting to speak.

"Go on, Julie," your mom, Gabrielle, encourages you. "She's here to help." You see Dr. Runquist smile at you. Officer Frentzen does the same when you look at him. "We're all here to help."

"Six," you say, finally. "I turned six on July 11."

"Wow!" Officer Frentzen says. "Six years old! And your folks here tell me you're really brave!"

You blush, unused to such praise from a complete stranger.

But you also start to wonder.

_Why do they keep telling me I'm so brave?_

You look at your mother again. She squeezes your hand as she draws you close to her.

"Julie, look at me," she says. You tighten your arms around her, then let go and look at her.

Her eyes are swimming, though the tears haven't fallen yet. Through all this, she looks at your with her gentle smile.

"I know this won't be easy," she starts to say, "but we have to know. Can you tell us what happened?"

You widen your eyes at the question, then bury your face into your mom's chest. You start sobbing.

"I don't want to," you say. "I can't."

"I know, baby," your mom says as she kisses the top of your head. She gives you another tight hug. "But we have to know what happened."

"But I'm scared!" you whimper. "I'm too scared, Momma!"

"Shhh." She hugs you again. "It's okay."

"I know you don't want to talk about it, Julie," Dr. Runquist says, "but it's important to know."

"It's over now," your mom reassures you.

"Besides," your dad says, "Officer Frentzen will make sure everything is going to be okay."

"That's right, Julie," the police officer says. "I'm here to help. We're all here to help."

"Be brave," your mom says to you as she dries your tears with gentle fingers. "You ARE brave. It will be okay."

You swallow hard, and you notice your heart is going crazy again.

_Do I really need to talk about it?_

_He knows where we live. He said he's going to hurt me, momma, or daddy if I ever told anyone what happened._

Your mom kisses the top of your head again, then ruffles your hair. You love the way her fingers move, the way they calm you down. After a few minutes of this and silence, she asks, gently, quietly, "Can you tell us who did it?"

You look at your mom's face through your tears. "It… it was Uncle Frank…"

Your mom gasps, and your dad says what you know are bad words that you should never repeat. But the thing you notice above everything else is your mom's embrace on you slacken as soon as you named who it was you hurt you.

"It can't be… it can't be," your mom says, her voice barely audible.

"I want… I want to –" your dad starts to say, but Officer Frentzen asks him a question.

"Who's Uncle Frank? Is he a relative or –"

"He's my brother," your mom replies. "Thomas, please –"

Your parents look at each other, and you can feel the anger and the hurt radiating from both of them.

The silence in the room that follows crushes you, squeezing your heart and choking your breath and making your head and your throat hurt from all the crying. Your mom rises from where she's seated on the bed and walks away from you.

And this is when you feel it most sharply.

You feel _abandoned _and _alone. _

_No._

_NO!_

Then you hear Diana again, after what seems like forever not hearing it.

"You're alone, Julie. I know how much it hurts you to be so lonely and alone."

_There's no one here for me._

"You'll always be lonely.

"Unless you reach out to me."

_No._

_NO._

Pain permeates the entirety of your being. Everything that you are is wracked in agony.

_Momma. Momma!_

_Don't leave me._

_PLEASE._

_I'm sorry._

_I'm so sorry._

Guilt has your heart in a vice, and it feels like it's about to come apart at the seams as it beats in a rapid, arrhythmic frenzy. You grab for your heart, feeling it running amok as you put your palm on your chest.

"You'll always be alone, unless you reach out to me."

You try to respond, to say no, to her voice, but now you start to wonder why you don't see the hospital room anymore. Your parents have disappeared, and so have Dr. Runquist and Officer Frentzen. All you can see now is that shimmering blue curtain of light that surrounds you.

Blackness then starts to encroach on your vision as you notice the pain in your heart is still getting worse and you're having great trouble breathing, just gasping for air.

The blue curtain of light disappears, and you're in the darkness again.

Yellow-tinged lights then fill and replace the darkness. And the pain in your heart is still getting worse.

You feel your legs weaken.

_I think I'm falling._

And then you feel nothing at all.


	21. Chapter 20 - The Summary So Far

**CHAPTER 20**

The following is an excerpt from Los Angeles Mother Ship Commander Diana's report to the Supreme Commander, John:

Regarding the local rebel leader captured twelve days ago, Prisoner LAC49C-07111993-JMP, Juliet Parrish:

The prisoner was taken to the prisoners' infirmary last night after suffering cardiac arrest during a session in the conversion chamber. She underwent treatment immediately after terminating the session because of the medical emergency. The incident occurred at 2109 hours local.

Immediate post-incident treatment consisted of cardiac defibrillation. The prisoner was taken to the infirmary for more comprehensive care as soon as heart activity was restored.

Parrish remains under close medical observation. The medical staff are certain that she will recover from the incident. Because of our quick intervention at the onset of the medical emergency, Parrish did not suffer any long-term physiological damage. Ideally, she requires corrective surgery to completely eliminate future incidences of this type of medical emergency. However, any type of significant invasive surgery would necessitate a minimum of eight days for recovery, even with our medical techniques.

This is obviously not desirable. I have therefore instructed the medical staff caring for Parrish to treat her using chemical therapy. There are certain drugs which will mitigate against critical cardiac arrhythmia, though there are presently no drugs which will completely eliminate the problem.

The medical staff advise extreme caution and recommend suspending the conversion process until she has recovered sufficiently from the cardiac emergency and her subsequent treatment.

I agree with the staff's recommendation. However, I will resume the conversion process at the earliest safe opportunity.

Meanwhile, the suspension of Parrish's conversion will allow me time to analyze her psychological profile in even more detail and assess the progress we've made n converting her. Moreover, I will also review everything we have learned about her so that we may use these discoveries to further develop and refine the strategy to convert her.

At this time, it is useful to review the progress of Parrish's conversion process.

As reported at the initiation of the conversion process it was discovered that Parrish has a minor congenital heart condition during the preliminary medical examination. Subsequent physiological scans and analysis determined that she is vulnerable to cardiac arrhythmia if subjected to extreme levels of physical and/or emotional stress. The condition is so minor that I believe it was never discovered by any of her various physicians; there is not a single mention of this congenital defect in the subject's medical records.

Additionally, my previous reports on the progress of Parrish's conversion have already noted the circumspect approach my team and I adopted. However, because of the strength of will and resilience she has demonstrated under conversion thus far, we were succeeding only in eroding Parrish's health each time we put her in the conversion chamber. Continual and increasing dosage of the serums used in the process not only risk permanent organ damage – specifically to her heart, liver, and kidneys – but they also present the very real possibility of doing irreversible physical damage to her brain.

Perhaps the following comparison might illustrate the situation more effectively: The conversion process is akin to creating a sculpture out of stone. Parrish, with her very strong will, is exactly like a hard stone. It should be obvious, even through mere intuition, that the harder the stone, the more difficult it is to work with. Complicating matters even more is the irony that the hardest of stones are also the most brittle. A single cut at the wrong angle or with an improper amount of force risks shattering the stone. Clearly one must take great care in finding the correct approach in sculpting such a hard stone.

The conversion process is exactly the same. The team performing the conversion must be mindful of the relationship between the subject's strength of will and her physical state. This relationship, in large part, dictates the approach the team must take in converting the subject.

As we've worked on converting Parrish, it has become clear my team's original cautious approach was clearly flawed. Any gains we made towards converting her were being offset by the deterioration of her physical health. To see things in terms of conversion being similar to sculpture, we were in danger of damaging, even destroying, the stone, instead of creating something from it.

I therefore made the decision to develop and adopt a more aggressive strategy to converting Parrish. This revised strategy can be described thus: In order to condition Parrish to distrust her rebel comrades and sever her loyalties to them, I decided to exploit a profound fundamental fear most, if not all, females of this culture possess :the fear of unwanted sexual objectification and exploitation by males.

It is also quite useful that Parrish experienced sexual abuse as a young child. The incident was so traumatic, she actually had repressed her memories of it. But there is absolutely no doubt that this is part of her history. Police and medical records confirm the incident, and Parrish herself revealed it – without her knowledge or consent – during interrogation under truth serum.

Moreover, it is also fortuitous, if inevitable, that the history of sexual abuse in her childhood also profoundly impacted Parrish in other ways. The prisoner's fear and loathing of a state of abandonment, isolation and loneliness were born from her that sexual abuse, so this is something I have begun to more fully explore and exploit.

It must be said that conversion subjects always respond more strongly to unaltered memories of traumatic experiences compared to purely synthetic stimuli. Parrish's responses during tonight's session is further evidence of this; we made greater gains towards converting her tonight compared to all her other previous sessions in the conversion chamber combined.

It is also fortunate that Parrish has seemingly always had a strong aversion for her leadership role over her group. She sees it as a burden she would rather not bear. While I've been exploiting this aversion from the earliest opportunity, combining this with her profound fear of sexual exploitation has proved to be extremely effective in creating doubt in and mistrust of her companions. It also has the significant impact of amplifying and reinforcing her feelings of loneliness and isolation. It is clear to me that all these elements are fundamental aspects of the prisoner's psychological identity.

There is no question that the timing of Parrish's critical medical emergency was most unfortunate. She had just registered her strongest ideal reaction to an unaltered presentation of her memories of her childhood trauma when she experienced the onset of cardiac arrest. Had she been in a less compromised physical condition at that time, I could have made even more progress towards converting her.

Without doubt, Parrish's fortitude allied to her congenital heart condition make the task of converting her a complicated and protracted operation, since the conversion process tends to make certain physiological weaknesses, particularly of this type, more acute. However, I have had numerous past successes in converting subjects with more profound physiological flaws than what Parrish has.

My confidence in converting her therefore remains absolute.


	22. Chapter 21 - A Glimpse of the Future?

**CHAPTER 21**

This is Mike Donovan right now:

The back of your neck is soaked in perspiration, and you find yourself breathing hard. Your heart is going a million miles an hour, thumping in your ribcage and feeling as if it's liable to leap out and break free.

You're deep inside the Mother Ship.

It's a place you've been to before. It's a place that feels like you visit far too often.

The Visitors refer to this part of their gargantuan vessel as Section 34.

It is dark where you are. Perhaps not pitch-black dark, but definitely far darker than what you're used to. You can see these oddly-shaped translucent objects arrayed in rows and columns as far as your eye can see, as well as catwalks and staircases and access ramps here and there. There are also machines of unfamiliar design attached to all of those oddly-shaped objects.

_Always gives me the heebie-jeebies just looking at all this._

And where you are is filled with sound. It isn't loud nor particularly unpleasant to your ears, but there is a hum and drone of machinery running constantly that pervades everything and makes it nearly impossible to hear hardly anything else.

_Gotta stay alert_.

There is a hint of a chemical odor in the air too. Kind of like in a hospital, but not exactly like it either. But being someone who doesn't particularly enjoy being in a hospital – _who in his right mind would, other than doctors and nurses?_, you ask yourself – it's a bit of a disquieting mental comparison.

_Actually…_

For some reason, and for not the first time, you think it feels more like you're in a gigantic morgue.

_Damn it._

_Stop thinking like that._

Especially because you're here to find one person.

Someone you love more than life itself.

You walk up and down the various rows and columns of these semi-transparent objects, peering into each one. When you're more than three feet away all you see is the shape of these objects. But when you press your nose up to each one, you remember that each of these shapes is actually a container.

And none of these containers is empty.

There is someone inside each of these things.

When you peer into every single one you can see faces.

And naked bodies.

Men. Women. Children.

PEOPLE.

_I've got to find him._

_He's in here somewhere._

You feel your heart and soul sink, entrapped in a mire of desperation, knowing that you just _have_ to find the one person you're looking for.

But beyond desperation, you also feel despair.

_These poor people._

_What can I do to help them?_

_I can't free them all._

You try to ignore the twin monsters of desperation and despair gnawing at your soul and persist on your quest. You don't know how long you've been in here, nor how many of these of these coffin-like containers you've looked in, but you know that you won't stop until you finally succeed.

So you keep on looking inside each one, searching for that one particular face. Your hope dies a little with each unfamiliar one you look at. You don't even know how long you've been searching. But you know you'll keep on searching, until you finally –

_Sean._

It's really him.

You've found your son.

Your heart leaps with euphoria, but as quickly as that flash of joy is, it is tempered by the realization that you don't know how to get him out of that container he is in.

You didn't think that far ahead. It's not your way to plan things out. You've always preferred to fly by the seat of your pants.

So you look around, searching your immediate surroundings for something you might be able to use to get your boy out of that container he's in.

Almost magically, your foot grazes a metal tube. It is solid, about three and a half feet long. You pick it up, feeling its weight and smooth surface, and imagine the possibilities.

_Maybe I can smash that thing Sean is in._

So you measure the distance between yourself and the container your son is in. Holding the metal tube like a baseball bat, you swing like a slugger at home plate and hit the container.

Again and again you do so, and all you seem to get is an increasing pain in your hands as it absorbs the multiple shocks created by the collisions between the tube and the container.

But you don't stop. You keep on swinging.

You don't care about the noise you're making, nor about the fact your hands feel as if they'd been tenderized. You don't care about the bruises you are sure they'll have.

_I have to get him out._

Your hands are bleeding by the time you see the first spider-web cracks on the translucent container. But this spurs you on, makes you ignore the pain, and prods you to swing even harder.

Until finally, one last mighty swing finally breaks through. The glass-like material of the container cracks like the shell of a hatching egg, with pieces of it falling near your feet. And as the container breaks apart, a clear, slimy, viscous fluid gushes out.

You drop the metal tube and catch your son's inert body as it starts to fall in a heap inside the broken container, then lift him out with great care. Covered with the slime Sean is slippery, so you move slowly, mindful of the jagged edges of the broken translucent coffin where he'd been asleep for so many months.

You sit on the floor and cradle Sean in your lap, then press a finger on his neck. You panic when you don't feel a pulse.

"No," you say. "Don't die. You _can't_!"

Unsure about what to do, you start to massage his chest. You feel angry at yourself, now regretting that you didn't pay close enough attention to the CPR training courses you'd gone to years ago. But you keep on repeating the routine of chest massage and checking for a pulse, hoping like crazy that somehow your boy won't die in your arms.

Then, suddenly, he starts to cough and blink. He gasps and draws in a massive swallow of air, as his lungs haven't worked for so long.

Drawing him close to you, you hug him, tighter than you've hugged him in your life.

"Thank you… thank you," you keep on saying.

Your heart leaps again when you feel Sean wrap an arm weakly around you.

"Sean," you say. "Son, it's Dad."

"Dad," he says, his voice hoarse, his speech labored. "Dad."

"It's gonna be okay," you tell him. "It's gonna be okay."

You hold him in one arm, then start to remove your leather jacket. It's the only thing you can clothe him with at the moment. You mentally kick yourself again, realizing you really didn't plan any of this out.

"Here, son," you tell him as you swaddle him into your jacket. He just looks so feeble. He's over twelve years old, but seeing him like this somehow brings you back to happier times, when he was still a baby and you enjoyed those increasingly infrequent times when you came home from your job as a news cameraman to spend time with him.

Your eyes are filled with tears as you lift him up with your bloody hands. But they are tears of joy, and relief.

"We're getting out of here," you say as you stand up, slinging Sean into a fireman's carry over your shoulders.

You pass the innumerable other containers with people in them, again trying to ignore the compulsion to somehow free all of them from this death-like sleep they're in.

Before long you find yourself out of this secluded part of the Mother Ship, the part that the vast majority of people in the world have never ever seen, nor even suspected existed. You're hurrying down the more commonly seen white corridors on your way to one of the docking bays – you hope you're going the right way – when you notice something.

Actually, what you notice could be better described not as something, but _nothing._

_There's nobody here._

_No Visitors. _

_No technicians. No engineers. No Security troops. No Shock Troopers._

_What the hell – _

As these thoughts fill your mind, you suddenly see a flash of red and black in your peripheral vision as you cross a four-way junction of corridors.

_Shock Troopers!_

_Damn it!_

You run faster now, no easy feat with your twelve year-old son slung over your shoulders. You dare not look behind you to see the Visitor soldiers, but there's no doubt they saw you and are now in pursuit.

One of them fires his weapon – you hear the pulsing whine from it – and misses you to your left. A couple of more shots also miss, one to each side of you.

There are multiple shots now coming at you in fairly rapid succession, all of them missing to either side you.

_That's weird._

_Why are they all missing? _

_Not that I want to get hit, but – _

Then you realize something.

_They're funneling us into the middle of the hallway! I can't find cover this way!_

As soon as you understand the tactic the Visitor soldiers are using, you feel a burn on your left foot. An explosion of intense heat and sparks heralds a near-hit, but it's hot enough to make your brain erupt with pain signals from your foot.

_No._

_I'm falling._

_NO!_

You fall onto the floor, and in doing so you drop Sean from your fireman's carry. As much as it hurts you to fall, you're far more worried about dropping your son.

But other things now demand your attention.

The Shock Troopers have caught up to you and have surrounded you, each of them with their rifles drawn and aimed at you and Sean's crumpled form.

Two of them grab you by your biceps and manhandle you into a kneeling position. Another one stands over you, the barrel of his weapon a meter from your face.

"Please," you say, "take me. But please don't hurt my son."

One of the Shock Troopers now moves toward Sean. As alarmed as you are in seeing this, you notice something very strange about this particular alien soldier.

She looks like a woman. You can't see the soldier's face, but it's easy to tell from the shape of her body and the honey-colored waves under the helmet. You don't ever recall seeing a female Shock Trooper in all the months you've been fighting a guerilla war against the Visitors.

_Doesn't mean they can't have women in their ranks, I guess._

But more than that, the other thing that stands out to you is the fact that she is far smaller than the rest of the Troopers holding you in thrall.

_That's definitely weird._

Something else bothers you as you watch her. You notice the very slight limp in her gait.

_I don't know why, but there's something familiar about her_

You gasp and struggle to free yourself from the two soldiers holding you down when the female Shock Trooper puts a foot down on Sean's neck as he lies prone a few feet away from you and aims her rifle at him.

"You leave him alone!"

The female soldier turns towards you.

"Like _you_ left _me_?"

_Her voice._

_I KNOW her._

You watch now as she leans her rifle against her leg then reaches for her black helmet and takes it off.

You gasp as soon as you see her face.

"Julie!"

It's the same soft, kind face. The same blonde waves.

Her eyes, though.

There is a coldness in those blue-green eyes you've never seen before. You never ever thought you would ever see anything like this in those eyes.

"You left me behind."

"I – I didn't want to!"

"You left me behind," Julie says again, then she looks away from you. She drops the helmet onto the floor and picks up the rifle.

She aims it at Sean.

"Say good-bye to your son."

"NO!" you scream and fight to break free from the soldiers again, but it's a useless struggle. The whine of Julie's weapon doesn't drown out your screams of ultimate pain and outrage, and the electric blue flash that ends Sean's life makes the side of his face transform into char is a sight you can never ever unsee.

"Why?!" you asked, crazed out of your mind, your soul devastated beyond comprehension. "Why did you kill my son?!" Tears have now filled your eyes.

Julie now aims the weapon at your face. "Why?" she asks. "Because you left me behind at the hospital. Because of what they've been doing to me for the last thirteen days."

You blink away the tears, and you see that she too is crying. "Because I thought you loved me – but Diana showed me the truth."

"The truth – ?

"If you truly loved me, like I felt and thought that you did, you would have risked your life to save me."

"Julie – " you start to plead.

But she cuts you off. "Diana was right." Her eyes are now angry slits as they fix themselves on you. "So much for love."

And the last thing you see is a blinding blue-white flash.

Mike Donovan was drenched in sweat as he sat up on his bunk.

He was dreaming.

Actually, he was having a nightmare, and this nightmare has been one that he has been having for months now. He'd lost count of all the times he dreamt of his son getting killed.

This time, though, things were a bit different.

All times previously, Sean had been killed one way or the other by the Visitors. It was beyond cruel now for him to dream about Julie murdering his son in cold blood. Not only that, but to be reminded of his feelings of deep guilt for leaving Julie behind at the hospital was especially painful.

He couldn't believe how hard and fast his heart was going. It took him a few moments to calm down. He pulled his soaked shirt off and sits on the edge of his bunk, thinking about his nightmare. He looked at his watch and remembered that he had taken a short nap after lunch. He and Tyler were meeting with Martin tonight, and, deprived of sleep, he thought he'd take a few hours off for himself to recharge.

Then his heart jumps anew when the door into the trailer he was in opened suddenly.

"Donovan!" Father Andrew, red-faced and out of breath, stood at the doorway.

"Yeah?"

"You better get out here, right now!"

Donovan, still shirtless, followed the priest out of the trailer. "What's going on – "

He knew exactly what Father Andrew was so excited about as soon as their feet hit the ground. He saw it.

And he felt it.

The air itself seemed to be vibrating, and something huge had cast a shadow over the entire rebel camp.

"God in heaven – " Donovan said, mouth agape as he and the priest watched a Visitor Mother Ship glide in the sky above them.

"Is that –" Father Andrew stuttered. "Is that the L.A. ship, or a new one?"

Donovan squinted into the bright early afternoon sunlight as he studied the gargantuan vessel, noting it had several strange protrusions that looked like giant blisters on its underside, the likes of which he'd never seen before. "This one's new. And it looks like it's even bigger than Diana's." He looked towards the southeast and saw the Los Angeles Mother Ship still parked over its usual place above the city's downtown area. He eyeballed the direction the new Mother Ship was moving in. "I think it's heading for a rendezvous with Diana's ship."

By now the rest of the rebels could see and feel everything Donovan and Father Andrew were experiencing. The unpaved dirt streets of the southwestern movie set filled up with every person in the camp, all of them craning their heads up to watch the new Mother Ship's progress. The spacecraft was so big it took around two minutes to completely pass over the camp.

Donovan gestured at Ham Tyler, who was walking towards him and Father Andrew.

"God damn it," Tyler said, completely indifferent to the Roman Catholic priest in his company.

Donovan gestured upwards to the passing Mother Ship. "What do you make of this?"

Tyler's face was inscrutable as always. "This war just became a whole lot harder to win."

Donovan looked at Tyler, and all he could do was nod.


	23. Chapter 22 - A Rival's Arrival

**CHAPTER 22**

Martin watched Diana descend the stairs onto the flight deck. He, along with Lorraine and nine other Visitor officers, stood at attention as she walked towards them. They were assembled in the landing bay reserved for the ship's executive staff.

"Diana," he greeted her as she took a place next to him.

She responded with a curt nod.

Everyone's eyes now turned towards the squad ship which had just entered the landing bay. It was maneuvering into its designated parking dock on the flight deck.

"I should have been informed earlier," she said to Martin, irritated.

"My apologies, Diana, but her Mother Ship came in cloaked. We informed you immediately as soon as visual scanning picked her up."

Diana waved him off, but Martin continued. "I'd been in contact with her primary lieutenant, Lydia. She says the Sector Squadron Commander arrived in the Earth system approximately three hours ago and visited John at the Washington, D.C. Mother Ship first before proceeding here."

"I don't appreciate these surprise visits," Diana said under her breath. "Particularly by this particular Sector Squadron Commander."

_Interesting_, Martin thought.

_Perhaps Diana and Pamela have a history together._

_I wonder how much Diana would reveal if I pressed her about this… _

The flight deck's P.A. klaxons came to life. "Attention, all personnel. Sector Squadron Commander's shuttle has landed."

As the announcement echoed in the landing bay, the newly-arrived shuttle's portside hatch yawned open. Immediately after the entry ramp touched down on the flight deck, a pair of Security troopers exited the craft.

Seconds later, Pamela descended the ramp. She had adopted the appearance of a woman in her late thirties, with her dark brown wavy locks coiffed medium-length and designed to frame her face. It was a look that was both aesthetically pleasing and pragmatic. Just from the way she walked, with her back erect and her head held high, proud and confident but without a trace of arrogance, and strides that were long and unhurried, one could tell that this person was familiar and comfortable with wielding power and authority. Her toned musculature was also fairly obvious despite the loose-fitting uniform she wore.

"Hello, Diana," said Pamela, a hint of a smile on her face. Martin noticed that she spoke with an impressive facsimile of an English accent. _West Midlands, as far as I can tell_. As with everything else about her, Pamela's speech pattern enhanced the air of quiet yet powerful authority she exuded.

"Welcome, Commander."

"The Leader sends his greetings."

Martin noticed Diana's hesitation before continuing with the exchange of pleasantries.

"I'm afraid you've caught me by surprise," Diana said. Martin was surprised at her candor. "It disturbs me I was not informed earlier of your arrival."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Diana. I hope I haven't thrown you off schedule."

"No, no, I would have liked to have had more time to prepare a reception for you," Diana said graciously. "A reception befitting a Supreme Commander."

"Well, how very thoughtful of you," Pamela said, smiling, as she turned and walked towards the same stairs Diana had descended from just minutes earlier. Diana, Martin, and Lorraine all followed in her wake.

_That was a bit… dismissive_, thought Martin, as he watched the interplay between his superior officer and her own direct superior.

"The Leader wants the schedule speeded up," Pamela said as she climbed. "And for that purpose, I've brought engineers and other experts for a special project."

'_Special project'? What special project?_

"When it succeeds, we'll be able to pump all the fresh water from Southern California in the next thirty days."

"I should have been left to handle that," Diana said.

"Well, it could become a military issue, an area in which I'm fairly well-versed." Pamela, Martin noted, wasted no time or energy with gestures of false modesty. He was quite aware of Pamela's reputation for not tolerating pretension.

"I'm aware of that," Diana said.

Pamela stopped at the last landing before reaching the catwalk and turned towards Diana, Martin, and Lorraine. Any semblance of a friendly smile was gone from her face. "The 'resistance' has been causing us some delays, and, frankly, jeopardizing our mission," she said, suddenly deadly serious. "We were led to believe that the rebels in this area were disorganized and ineffective."

Martin noticed Diana bristle at the implication. "Steven is the only one who has been ineffective in dealing with the rebels," Diana said. She then smiled. "However, I have captured the rebels' leader, and I am – "

Pamela scoffed, shaking her head. "It's not important that we discuss that presently," she said. "What _is_ important is that we do as we're told." With that she resumed her climb up the stairs onto the catwalk.

Martin couldn't see, but he was certain that as soon as Pamela's back had turned, Diana's smile had become a venomous glare.

He gave Lorraine a wordless glance as he followed Pamela and Diana out of the executive landing bay.

An hour later, Martin received a summons on his communicator from Diana.

"Pamela wants to have a look at Juliet Parrish," she said. "Meet us at the intake station in the prisoners' infirmary in seven minutes."

"As you wish, Diana."

_Prisoners' infirmary?_

_What happened to Julie?_

Martin hurried to an elevator and rode it down to the Mother Ship's detention section. Detention was several levels above where he was, but the trip took a mere two minutes.

He waited at intake for a further four minutes before Diana and Pamela arrived. He considered accessing Juliet's file at a local computer, but realized that anyone inspecting the access logs would know that he had done so.

_I've got no business looking into a prisoner's medical file. Not unless Diana specifically gave me that access._

He was still thinking about what the best thing to do was when Diana and Pamela arrived. He saluted both with a bow of the head.

"I've read your reports on your work with this prisoner," Pamela said to Diana. "I trust there is an observation station where you're keeping her?"

"Of course. We have her in Room Two," Diana said, who then waved at Martin to lead the way.

The three of them entered a side room with a window that looked into where Juliet Parrish was being kept. She was unconscious on a bed. A thick blanket had been placed over her to keep her warm, while a respirator mask covered her mouth and nostrils.

Martin couldn't believe how different Juliet looked compared to when he helped prepare her for the conversion process. Her hair was matted and in tangles, and her pallor made the dark circles under her eyes even more pronounced. Despite the fact that she was under the blanket, Martin could tell that she had lost quite a lot of weight. The respirator mask couldn't hide her sunken cheeks.

_She looks so frail._

Pamela looked at her in silence for a minute before turning to Diana. "How long did your medical staff say this human needs to recover before you can resume the conversion process?"

"Their most recent estimate, given to me shortly before you arrived, is a minimum of three days before they can determine whether or not she is healthy enough for me to continue working on her."

"And how long ago did she experience the cardiac arrest?"

_Cardiac arrest?!_

"It happened two nights ago, per my reports," Diana replied.

"Yes, of course," Pamela said.

_I wonder if I could ask Bruce to access those reports and send them to me. Or at least give me copies of Julie's medical readouts._

_I MUST meet with Donovan. _

As Martin ruminated, he continued to watch Pamela, who kept her eyes on the unconscious Juliet, talk to Diana. "You've had her for fifteen days now, and for most of that time you've been working on converting her. Does your conversion process typically take this much time?"

Martin caught Diana's furtive glance at him – she didn't bother to disguise her ire – before she answered. "There is no such thing as a 'routine' or 'typical' conversion. Every person subjected to the process is unique; therefore, every conversion process is unique to itself."

Pamela turned to look at Diana. "I don't see the practical value of converting her is, strategically or tactically."

"What do you mean? My goal is to plant her back into the resistance; surely you don't question the logic behind this?"

Pamela gave Diana a small smile. "I think you are underestimating the enemy somewhat."

"I don't follow."

"You have had her for more than two weeks. If her fellow rebels followed logic and reason, as I must assume they do, they would have made the decision to abandon her. If they were truly logical, they would have done so as soon as they discovered that you have taken her prisoner." Pamela smile never left her lips. "Haven't you considered the possibility that her comrades have given up on her and consider her as a casualty of war?"

"Of course I have – "

"Have you?" Pamela interrupted. "Don't you think that, even if you successfully convert her – "

"'If?'" Diana bristled, surprising Martin a bit with her forcefulness. "I have no doubt that I will convert her."

"Well, let me express, in no uncertain terms, that I have very serious reservations about the viability of your conversion process." Pamela smiled at Diana again. "As I was saying, even if you convert her, haven't you thought about the likelihood that the rebels will be extremely suspicious of her in the event she returns to them? That they could never trust her ever again, simply because, by now, they probably know about what you've been doing to her?"

"I will make sure she is programmed appropriately, after I break her." Diana shifted her gaze to Juliet. "And I am at the verge of doing so."

"Don't take things so personally, my dear," Pamela said. "It's just that I would rather kill the enemy; torture might satisfy a perverse personal sadism on your part, but it is rare when it effects a true change in your victim's personality."

Diana crossed her arms and smiled smugly. "Conversion may be torturous for the subject, but it is far beyond any simple conventional method of torture. Moreover, I have no 'personal sadism' to satisfy… only the willingness to do all that is necessary to do the job. If you have read the entirety of the reports, then you wouldn't question the effectiveness and value of the conversion process."

"Oh, I have read all of the reports," Pamela countered. "I've been doing so ever since I left the homeworld. As impressive as your successes are in this particular realm of expertise, far less impressive is your conversion process' rate of success, which is too far from satisfactory. One successful conversion for every three or four failures is too low an average to inspire confidence."

"Surely you must understand that it is statistically impossible to expect a perfect success rate with something as complex as the conversion process," argued Diana. Martin could sense her growing frustration. He could hear it in her voice, which was more forceful, held in check only by the fact that Pamela outranked her. "I cannot help it if the process risks, among other things, permanent and irreparable brain trauma or even death on the part of the subject."

"Which eloquently explains part of my personal misgivings about it."

"And what other misgivings do you have?"

"Time and energy are not infinite in supply. As I said in the landing bay, the Leader wants to accelerate our schedule."

"I can appreciate the imperative behind the Leader's reasoning," Diana said, a bit calmer now. "But, once it is done, successfully converting Julie will be a definitive strategic advantage. When she is converted, I have no doubt she will be useful in finally defeating the local rebellion once and for all."

"I doubt that. If they had proper military instincts, they are far beyond the point of accepting that she has been rendered expendable."

"I don't agree."

"Perhaps not." Martin watched Pamela put her hands on her hips, holding Diana in her gaze. "However, let us not forget whose opinion carries more weight, and whose decisions will ultimately be followed."

Martin looked at Diana. Her face was a mask of calm, but her eyes smoldered with the fire of anger and frustration despite the contact lenses that hid her true ones. She then looked down at her boots. "Yours, of course." She sighed. "Do you have other reservations to express, Commander?"

"Only one more," Pamela said. Her small smile was back on her face. "My biggest misgiving is that I believe you have made the task of converting this Juliet Parrish a purely personal affair."

"I assure you: That is so wide of the truth that it is laughable." Diana smiled smugly. "Why would you think that."

"Diana, my dear," said Pamela as she reached out to squeeze Diana's shoulder. "You are not the only one here who has a keen understanding of psychology."

Martin didn't miss Pamela's quick glance at him, a knowing look in her eyes. She then turned to leave the observation room. "Despite what you may be thinking," she said to Diana, "I do want to see you succeed in converting this woman. One fewer seditionist is always much more desirable than one more. As you say, if she is successfully converted, perhaps she may be an exploitable asset if your analysis of the enemy is somehow correct and her comrades welcome her back into their midst with open arms. That is why I am giving you one more week to finish converting her."

Pamela pressed the switch to open the door out, then looked at Diana.

What she said next froze Martin's blood and made his heart jump.

"If she has not been converted by the end of that week, I will kill her myself."


	24. Chapter 23 - Plans

**CHAPTER 23**

"These disguises were a good idea," Mike Donovan said as he turned the steering wheel gently. "The black-and-white helps a lot, too. Not even the Visitors would look twice if they see an LAPD squad car during the middle of curfew."

"It's all about attention to detail, Gooder," mumbled Ham Tyler. "That, and not doing anything to attract attention to yourself."

"How did you manage to get us the car and the uniforms so quick, anyway?"

"I've got my sources."

"I guess it helps to have friends in high places."

Tyler looked around, scanning the area. "We ought to be real close."

"There." Mike pointed at a sign on the side of a building. "Crandall's Film Storage and Processing. KNBC uses these guys a lot, though I've never actually been here before."

"The loading area is out back," Tyler said.

Mike drove the LAPD Crown Victoria into an alley, then found the loading dock. He drove up to it and got out of the car, straightening the fit of the black cap on his head.

Tyler walked towards the back of the black-and-white. "I need the key to the trunk."

Mike dug into his pants and tossed the car key at Tyler. "Grab me a Mag, too."

After a couple of seconds Tyler said, "Think fast, Gooder."

Mike barely had time to see the black, foot-long metal flashlight Tyler had tossed his way. He almost dropped it, in fact, which could have done some damage to his toes.

"Nice hands," Tyler quipped. "Come on. Lead the way."

Mike climbed up the loading dock platform, which was four feet off the ground, with ease. Tyler, a little older, did so as well, albeit with somewhat less grace. Watching Tyler wipe dust off his LAPD uniform made him smirk.

Such moments of amusement for Mike Donovan were much more rare these past few weeks. Ever since Julie's capture the group looked to him more and more as its _de facto_ leader. The fact that Tyler seemed to want to speak only to him in discussing all sorts of matters pertaining to the Los Angeles resistance group just reinforced that idea in everyone's mind.

As he and Tyler entered the building, , Mike's thoughts turned again to Julie. The young woman certainly felt the burden of leadership, something she and Mike had talked about a few times. She would sometimes immediately express her regret at confessing those woes to him; she said she didn't mean to complain so much. But he always encouraged her as well as he could.

Now that he had effectively taken over from Julie, at least until they freed her, the realities of the awesome and awful weight of the mantle of leadership over the group was starting to drag Mike's soul down.

Presently he turned on his Maglite. Tyler did the same with his, and said, "Aim at the floor."

"What for?"

"You don't want anyone outside to know we're in here. Aim the beam too high, and someone outside is sure to spot it through a window."

Mike chuckled. "Man," he said, leading the way through the warehouse. "You definitely think on a different level compared to someone like me."

"I've been in this business for a long time now, Gooder. It's impossible without a healthy amount of skepticism."

"Skepticism? Don't you mean cynicism?"

"Whatever you like." Tyler coughed as he and Donovan navigated their way through the shelves and racks filled with film canisters and tape boxes. "What is it with you and dumps?"

"What?"

Tyler coughed again. "This place is filthy. Your outfit's previous HQ was a sewer plant."

Donovan chuckled. Whether Tyler knew it or not, he was thankful for these little moments of accidental levity. "Hey, look at it this way," he said. "At least it's easy to tell if someone was already in here."

"How so?"

Donovan stopped for a moment and pointed his Maglite towards the path they'd taken. "All this dust on the floor ought to show up footprints real easy."

"Speaking of which," Tyler said. "No footprints in front of you. Where's your little gator friend?"

"Cool it with that talk," Donovan answered, his voice tight. "He's one of us."

"Gooder you'll trust just about anyone. This whole setup stinks – "

Tyler froze in mid-sentence as a shadow moved from behind one of the shelving units behind them. Donovan aimed his flashlight at the shadow and saw the red-orange uniform and black boots. Tyler, meanwhile, aimed his Maglite much higher, towards the face of Martin, who brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the intense light.

"What happened to 'aim at the floor'?" Donovan said to Tyler, subtly telling the ex-CIA operative to point the flashlight anywhere but at Martin's face.

"Just like a swamp gator," Tyler said, ignoring Donovan. "Sneaks up on you every time."

Donovan had to physically grab Tyler's arm to keep the Maglite's beam from hurting the Visitor's sensitive eyes.

"Thank you," Martin said.

"Martin," said Donovan, extending his hand out to the Visitor.

Martin did likewise, and the two of them shook hands. "Hello, Mike."

Even in the dark Donovan didn't miss the Visitor's quick sideways glance at Tyler, then realized that he'd had no chance to tell Martin about this deviation from the established norm. Usually, whenever Martin and Donovan met, no matter where and when those meetings took place, it was always just between the two of them. Sometimes a third party would facilitate the meeting, but the actual conversations that took place were exclusively between the pair.

So that explains part of Martin's unease with this meeting.

Of course, Tyler's fairly overt hostility towards Martin explains the rest of it.

Perhaps because his morale and mood were so low, sensing the tension between Tyler and Martin made Donovan laugh on the inside. _It actually really makes a lot of sense. I mean, these guys are basically doing the same job; their styles might be totally different, but they're two sides of the same coin. _

_As with magnets, like repels like._

When neither Martin nor Tyler seemed willing to initiate any attempt to introduce himself to the other, Donovan decided to explain things. Gesturing to Tyler, he said to Martin, "This… person is one of us. His name is Ham Tyler. I don't like him, but I trust him. At least I do in this war.

"I ask you to do the same."

Donovan watched Martin look at Tyler, who was impossible to read as always, then look back at him. "Well, I trust you, Mike. That's enough."

Tyler spoke to Donovan. "Ask him what the deal is with that new Mother Ship."

Donovan rolled his eyes. "Tyler, you can be so ridiculous sometimes. You could have asked him yourself."

When Tyler said nothing further, Martin said, "That is Pamela's flagship. Pamela is the Fleet's Sector Commander."

"What's it doing here?" asked Mike.

"The Leader dispatched Pamela to the Earth system for a special project designed to accelerate progress in taking Southern California's freshwater."

"You guys play for keeps," Donovan said. When he saw the blank look on Martin's face, he realized that perhaps the Visitor was unfamiliar with this particular part of the vernacular. "I mean, you guys are going all in to win this war."

"Nobody is in a war to lose, Gooder," said Tyler. "What exactly is this 'special project'?"

"I do not have details yet," Martin said, "but as soon as I have concrete information, I will pass it along."

"Good," Donovan said, then changed the subject abruptly. "How's Julie?"

Martin's face sank. "She hasn't broken yet… but she will. And if she doesn't break, she's going to die."

"What?"

"Julie suffered a cardiac arrest last night," Martin explained. "She's in the infirmary now. Our medical staff – "

"'Our'?" Tyler interrupted. "Whose side are you on?"

"He's on our side," Donovan said, annoyed. "Go on, Martin."

"As I was trying to tell you," Martin said, his voice clipped, "she is under the care of the Mother Ship's medical staff. They have assured Diana that Julie will have recovered enough in a few days, at which point she will resume the conversion process."

"Did she give up the location of the old HQ?" Tyler asked.

"I honestly don't know," said Martin. "I'm not part of the specialized staff who perform conversions. I do know that Dan Pascal was taken prisoner the same night Julie was, and that he was interrogated by Security."

"I told you she'd never talk," Donovan said to Tyler.

"That's not what he said," Tyler countered. "All he said is the doesn't actually know if she did."

"Well, it doesn't change anything. We've got to get Julie out of this jam." Donovan looked at Martin. "We need you and the Fifth Column to help."

Martin slumped and shook his head. "I wish there was something I could do, Mike, but under the circumstances – "

"Look," Tyler interrupted Martin again, "you do as the man tells you, or I'm going to turn you into an hors d'oeuvre."

Martin went quiet for a moment, then said to Donovan, "Are there many more of this one?"

Donovan chuckled. "Fortunately selective breeding keeps their number to a minimum."

"Alright," Martin said after another spell of silence. "I'll listen to whatever plan you might have. But I can promise nothing."

_Life's a bitch sometimes._

Donovan had been quiet for most of the trip back to Sable Ranch. He'd asked Tyler to make the drive back after the marathon meeting with Martin. Not only was he tired out of his mind, but finding out what had happened to Julie – and yet still not knowing everything he wanted to know, simply because Martin had no more information to offer – put a damper on his mood.

Tyler had just about finished parking the LAPD squad car when Donovan saw Ruby Engels walking towards them. He looked at his watch. It said "3:32 am."

"Ruby," he said as he got out of the car. He grabbed his leather jacket, which he had stashed in the back seat, and draped it over her own layers of clothing. "It's real late, and it gets cold out here at night."

"I just have to talk to you," she said.

"And it couldn't wait until the morning?" he asked, before quickly clarifying, "I mean, not that I don't think whatever you have to say isn't important. It obviously is, if you waited out here for me and Tyler to get back. It's just that –"

"Don't you worry, Mr. Donovan," Ruby said. "I may be old, but I'm a lot tougher than people give me credit for."

"You're the one who works undercover at Security Headquarters, aren't you?" Tyler asked.

"That's me," replied Ruby, a hint of pride in her voice.

"She's legit," Tyler said after a beat. He closed the driver's door. "If you don't mind, Gooder, I'm turning in." He looked at Ruby. "I'll see you when the sun's up."

Donovan watched Ruby give Tyler a big grin, then looked down at the elder woman who was more than a foot shorter than he was. "So," he said, "what's so important you can't wait until tomorrow?"

"I want to help, Mr. Donovan."

Donovan was puzzled. "Um… you _do_ help, Ruby. A ton."

"I mean with whatever you and Mr. Tyler are planning."

Donovan raised his eyebrows, surprised. "'Planning'?"

"Come now, Mr. Donovan. It doesn't take a genius to figure out you've been wracking your brains trying to come up with a plan to save Julie." Ruby smiled at him. "And although I wasn't there, I've been told that when Mr. Tyler first showed up you and he made arrangements to work on saving Julie."

Donovan just had laugh. "You're pretty sharp."

"I kind of have to be," Ruby said, winking up at him.

Mike tried to return her smile, but couldn't. "Can I level with you?"

"Always."

Donovan sighed. "Tyler is convinced that Julie is, as he calls it, 'damaged goods;" the sad thing is, based on what we've been told by people who know, there's a real good chance he's actually right." His heart ached. "If Diana's converted her, if there's any possibility of that at all, Tyler thinks she's better off dead, and we'd be better off without her." He looked away. "Tyler thinks we ought to kill her… before she has a chance to betray and hurt us all."

Ruby's mouth was agape. Donovan couldn't trust himself to meet her gaze. "I don't like it any more than you do."

"Well," she said after a few moments of quiet contemplation, "that's obviously the worst case scenario. What if she hasn't been converted?"

"If that's the case, we bring her home. We've got a plan for that too." He looked at Ruby. "I just hope she can hold out for just a little bit longer."

Ruby was quiet for a moment, digesting everything he'd said. "Mr. Donovan, don't feel guilty about Julie."

"I can't help it if I do."

"But it wasn't your fault. None of this is."

"I don't know about that," he said, sighing. "I left her there at the hospital. I should have gone back for her."

"You had no choice." Ruby touched his forearm, and Donovan wrapped her hand in his. "I was there too, remember?" she said.

Mike sighed again. "It took me forever to come up with a realistic plan to spring her." He rubbed his forehead, trying to salve a headache that might be from sleep deprivation, or perhaps from stress. "We have to get her back. She's the only one cut out to be in charge of this outfit."

Ruby gave his hand a squeeze. "Sometimes you just have to admit there are some things you can't control. One thing you do have to remember, though: You'll always have friends around you. Friends who want to help." When Donovan looked at her, she was smiling up at him. "Which is precisely why I'm here, in fact."

"What do you mean?"

"I want to help getting Julie back. I mean, _really_ help, not just be on the sidelines or stay here waiting and worrying for everyone to come back."

Mike hesitated. "I don't know, Ruby – "

"I'm not a helpless old woman, Mr. Donovan!" she said with over-the-top feigned outrage.

"Please, please!" Donovan said, his hands raised in mock exasperation. "When are you going to call me 'Mike'?" He couldn't help but laugh. "Everyone calls me 'Donovan' around here."

"Either that or," she paused before continuing, "'Gooder'." The two of them laughed together.

"I'll call you 'Mike' on one condition."

"And what's that?"

"You and Mr. Tyler let me help you – _really _help – get Julie back."

Donovan shrugged. "I guess there's just no saying no to you." He ran a hand through his hair. "I'll talk to Tyler about it in the morning. I may not like it, but since you're insisting so hard we'll find some way to use you."

"Anything," Ruby said. "Just to get Julie back."


	25. Chapter 24 - Know Thy Enemy

**CHAPTER 24**

_This is interesting._

Diana was in her private office, studying the logs and records of Juliet Parrish's suspended conversion. Recordings of everything the human experienced during all her sessions in the conversion chamber – her physiological responses, the fantasies imposed on her mind by the conversion chamber, everything she had revealed under interrogation, even comprehensive detailed reconstructions of her memories – were arrayed on her data display monitors.

She was searching through a selection of those memories now, specifically ones that dealt with conflicts with her comrades in the local rebellion. There weren't many; clearly this young woman was someone her companions trusted implicitly and respected without reservation.

_I don't quite understand why they follow her. She's so young – younger than most of them, actually – and is so completely inexperienced as a leader of a fighting force. She doesn't even _want_ to be their leader. And yet, despite all this, at least as far as what I can conclude from analyzing her memories go, she doesn't seem to have had many incidents when she came into direct conflict with any of her comrades._

But there have been e a few.

And most of them involved Michael Donovan.

To Diana's dismay, as far as she could tell none of these conflicts engendered any strong feelings of antagonism between them. Whatever strong emotions Parrish experienced in the moment appeared to be fleeting at best. But it was beyond doubt:

_This connection to Donovan seems pivotal. If nothing else, there is a unique tension in this particular relationship._

Diana navigated her computer's interface, looking for some of the notes she took on a few of Parrish's memories. She then pulled up the reconstructions of those memories.

One of them happened just a few weeks ago:

Parrish was with one of her comrades, whom Diana identified as Mark McIntyre. They were all huddled in a small space filled with computer equipment and other machines, dressed in black commando outfits. The counterfeiter, Dan Pascal, was with them.

Diana recognized the scene before her. This was when Parrish's group somehow managed to acquire Eleanor Dupres' special pass into the Los Angeles Medical Center.

Another rebel joined the three. Elias Taylor was sweating profusely, breathing hard. He'd evidently been on a bit of a run. His quick entry surprised everyone.

"Where is he?" Parrish asked Taylor.

"Donovan's still up there," was Taylor's reply. He couldn't miss the flash of worry on Parrish's face upon hearing this; neither did Diana. "Look, I'll go back for him."

Parrish looked up at Taylor, shaking her head. "No, you can't."

"Why not?"

"Because we can't risk everything for just one person, no matter who it is. We've got to go," Parrish said. When nobody moved, she repeated, more forcefully, "Let's go!"

Diana watched Parrish bite her upper lip, hitting her leg with an open hand in a gesture of frustration and worry and upcoming regret.

_She certainly does command a lot of respect._

_Having said that, I think there definitely is something to this connection to Donovan._

Diana moved her hands on her controls, fast-forwarding the computer reconstruction of that particular memory. Parrish ran towards Donovan, who himself was running towards her. She embraced him tight as they met.

"Hey, leave a couple of ribs intact," he said as he wrapped his arms around her.

"Oh, I was so worried!"

Donovan held her, looking down into her eyes. "You were?" he asked. "How worried?"

Diana saw the blush on Parrish's face as she stammered, "Well, I… I was just as worried… as I would be… if anybody – "

Donovan smiled at her. "You were a little more concerned about me?"

Parrish returned his smile. "You have an awfully high opinion of yourself, don't you?" she said in a quiet voice.

"I'm beginning to get an awfully high opinion of you," he said, just as quietly.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

_Very interesting._

Diana wrote some more notes down into her computer, then pulled another one of Parrish's memories for her to study:

In this one, Parrish and Donovan were alone together, somewhere in the dilapidated building that served as the rebel hideout. Diana noted when this incident happened.

_This was just a week before John's announcement at the medical center._

"Can I talk to you for a moment, Donovan? In private?" Parrish said to Donovan, gesturing for him to follow her.

Donovan nodded, then let her lead him into a room filled with communications equipment, maps, and sundry other items. Diana guessed that this was the rebels' strategy room. She watched Parrish close the door and turn towards a wall, not wanting to look at Donovan. Diana noticed that Parrish's eyes were starting to wet with tears.

"Well," he said. His tone was nonchalant. "What do you want to talk about?"

"I can't believe you did that." Parrish's voice was quiet. "I never thought you could be such an asshole."

"What are you talking about?"

Parrish walked over to a desk, still not looking at Donovan. "I know you went to see Kristine Walsh."

"How did you find out about that?"

"Stanley told me before he left. You obviously told him what you'd been up to when he gave you a ride here from his place."

Donovan was silent for a moment. "Julie," he said. "Look. My son – you know he's up there." She still kept her back to him. "What would you do if you're in my shoes? I have to do something to get him back." He approached her. "I don't think Kris is helping them – "

"I don't care!" she exploded, smashing a hand on the desk as she finally turned around to face him. "You jeopardized everything when you acted on your own! You put your trust in a traitor!"

_So_, Diana thought,_ Kristine was already less than loyal before I killed her. _

"What do you expect me to do? They've got my boy!"

"I expect you to think of us before you think of yourself," Parrish said, still angry. "You risked all of us, Donovan. You don't even care about us!"

"That's not true," Donovan said, stung, as he closed the distance between himself and her. He touched her upper arm, holding it loosely. "You don't understand… it has nothing to do with you."

_What a curious thing to say._

Parrish was silent as she looked up at Donovan. "Mike, we need you," she said finally, her voice soft and quiet. "_I _need you. But unless you can give us your best, you should go before you really hurt us."

With that she turned away, opened the door, and left Donovan alone in the room.

Diana watched the reconstruction of the memory again. Parrish's words echoed in her mind: "Mike, we need you. _I _need you."

_Very interesting indeed._


	26. Chapter 25 - Clandestine Confab

**CHAPTER 25**

"Thank you for meeting with us at this hour, Bruce. I appreciate the risk you are taking."

Martin stood to welcome Bruce into his quarters, then beckoned for him to take a place around the desk. Lorraine and Barbara were already there, and they both nodded to Bruce in greeting.

"We can speak freely in here," Martin said to Bruce. "It's not often we can share the company of someone who is assigned to the conversion process specialist staff."

"Indeed," Bruce answered. "We are usually sequestered from general staff. Diana's orders, and they carry throughout the Fleet. We are allowed some free time, though it is obviously very precious to us."

Lorraine smiled at Bruce. "This is why we are so grateful to you for agreeing to join us at such a late hour."

"It should be obvious to you why we're having this meeting," Martin said.

Bruce nodded. "The rebel leader. Of course."

"Yes," Lorraine said.

Barbara's face was a mask of worry. "We must know – what are the chances of Diana succeeding in converting Julie?"

"I cannot define those chances precisely," Bruce said after looking at everyone in the room. "What I will say, though, is that Diana has made a significant breakthrough. Juliet Parrish is very stubborn, but she is no different to anybody who is forced to go through the conversion process. Conversion affects everyone who undergoes it, always in a profound way. I believe it is only a matter of time before she breaks." He let everyone process what he just said, then continued, "Once that is done, Diana will condition and program her to betray her people. Of that there can be no doubt."

"That cannot be allowed!" Lorraine said. "If she is converted, not only will she be compelled to betray her own people, she becomes a danger to us and our movement as well."

"I understand and agree with you," Bruce said. "However, I fear that I have lost what little influence and control I may have had over this situation. And I never had much of that to begin with."

"What do you mean?" asked Lorraine.

"Diana's original approach to converting Juliet Parrish had been cautious, mostly due to my recommendation. I was hoping that might stall for time, so that she could somehow be freed before she was converted," Bruce explained. "However, on the night she experienced the cardiac arrest, Diana had decided to adopt a new, far more aggressive strategy."

"It was too aggressive," said Martin.

"Clearly," Bruce confirmed. He looked at Lorraine and Barbara before he continued. "I've already told this to Martin earlier, but I will share this with you now. Diana pushed Juliet Parrish beyond her limits. The human was already displaying a strong tendency for cardiac arrhythmia when subjected to highly-stressful stimuli. Diana simply decided to ignore my admonitions. Nevertheless, despite the fact she almost killed Juliet Parrish, Diana made significant progress towards successfully converting her that night."

"It's ironic," Martin said.

Lorraine frowned. "What is?"

"The fact that Julie's brush with death actually saved her from getting converted."

"For now, at least," Bruce said. He slouched as he looked down at his boots, not wanting to look at his comrades in the eye. "I feel ashamed. I have participated in more than twenty conversions as a member of Diana's conversion specialist staff. I know that what I am a part of is wrong. We torture people, drive them to near-psychosis… conversion is a cruelty that no person should undergo." He swallowed hard before continuing. "I've even been part of conversion attempts where the subject either suffered permanent physical brain damage or actually just died during the process."

"We understand," Lorraine said, reaching out to Bruce, squeezing his arm gently.

"I do not want to continue being a part of these cruelties," said Bruce. Then he sighed. "But I suppose it is just my misfortune that my training on the homeworld as a medical technician makes me useful to Diana and our leaders. "

Martin clasped a hand on his shoulder. "We are at war, Bruce. Whether or not we want to, we all become party to cruelties that attack our conscience." He shook Bruce gently, who then met his gaze. "You are doing the best you can to help. I know that."

"We all do," Barbara said.

"Thank you," said Bruce, bowing his head slightly. "So what happens now?"

Martin spoke. "We have a couple of possible plans. But without your direct involvement, none of them has a chance to succeed." He looked at Bruce square in the eye. "I ask you now: Are willing to take a big risk, to help us?"

"To help the Fifth Column," said Lorraine.

"To help Julie," Barbara added.

Bruce looked at everyone, then nodded. "What do you need me to do?"


	27. Chapter 26 - Waiting for What's Next

**CHAPTER 26**

Juliet Parrish opened her eyes. Panic gripped her heart as she didn't understand anything about that present moment.

She noticed she was on her back on a padded surface, and for some reason this struck her as a bit strange. _It shouldn't be_, she thought, _since I'm just waking up. _A sigh escaped her lips, and somehow doing so calmed her down. But then she had another spike of panic when she noticed something was covering the lower part of her face. At first she felt terrified about being unable to breathe with this thing encompassing her nose and mouth, but again she started to calm down when she noticed she wasn't suffocating. If anything, she found it was actually pleasant to breathe. A heavy blanket had been draped over her entire body, and she detected a strange sensation on her forearms. She felt a warmth, a sense of comfort, that surprised her, almost as if that experience was something completely alien.

She blinked and looked around, finding that she was in an unfamiliar place.

_Where am I? _

Again, a sense of panic spiked Julie's heart rate. She felt compelled to get up, to leave this unfamiliar place, but she felt so tired, so weak. Nevertheless, she still tried to raise herself from her reclined position.

_What the – _

Julie couldn't understand why her arms felt like they were pinned to her sides. She tried again, and that's when she became aware of the straps wrapped around her wrists. She tried to move her legs, and found that her ankles were likewise bound.

_Why – _

Her eyelids suddenly felt so heavy. Although she didn't want to – she wanted to figure out where she was, how she got there, and what was happening – she found herself surrendering to the beckoning darkness.

Julie remained on that cycle of waking up and returning to unconsciousness over the next forty two hours, a time period of which she was completely unaware. Each time she opened her eyes the first thing she felt was raw panic, similar to what one feels when waking suddenly from a nightmare. After that first uncomfortable burst of panic, she would settle down again and begin to wonder what was going on, before unconsciousness claimed her once again.

Most times, when she came to there was no one else in the room with her. Once or twice, though, she did see a couple of Visitors working with some equipment whose purpose she couldn't even begin to guess. She had no idea who they were or what they were doing to her. One time, she even saw one of them looking down on her. He said something to her, but whatever it was he was saying, she couldn't understand, and she reverted to unconsciousness almost immediately.

And while unconscious, Julie's mind always replayed her memories of her time in that strange, cold room with all the lights and walls of glass. All of her fears, even her most secret ones she had told precious few people about, and even the ones she had suppressed because they were too painful to keep, came alive inside that room, just as they do when she is asleep and dreaming. The line of separation between the here and now and the world which only existed in her mind and in her memories was blurred until it practically did not even exist.

This was Julie's life for the better part of those forty two hours.

Then, one time when she woke up, she noticed that her nose and mouth were no longer encased by the mask, and that the blanket that covered her had been removed. Her forearms itched a little, and when she looked at them she noticed tiny red spots on her skin.

_I've seen something like this before_.

She sat up, glad to know her limbs and arms were now completely unencumbered. That she could see and think clearly and didn't have a splitting headache totally escaped her, as did the fact that she felt well-rested. Her mind had fixed its focus on trying to figure out why those marks on her arms seemed so familiar.

She gasped as she had an epiphany.

_Needle tracks._

Julie's mind flashed back to her first two years in medical school. As an intern she spent some time in a few emergency rooms, where she assisted in the care of, among other patients, drug addicts who had been brought in for accidental overdoses. Quite a few of them injected heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine, and many had pronounced scarred markings on their arms as a result.

The marks on her arms were nowhere near as bad as the ones she'd seen, but seeing them was still a huge shock.

She knew that the Visitors had been drugging her, but this was the first time she noticed evidence of it on her arms. Julie blinked, and a couple of tears dropped and landed near some of the needle marks. She didn't understand why she was crying, though.

_Stop crying, you idiot._

_You know they're watching you. They're always watching._

_Don't let them see you like this._

Julie sniffed, wiping her cheeks and nostrils with the back of her left hand. She winced when she then felt a stinging pain on the skin. That was when she realized that her hand had bite wounds on it. _That's right. I bit myself. _ She looked at her other hand and found that she had bitten it as well. The wounds weren't open and bleeding, but they weren't completely closed either. The salt in her tears activated the nerves in her skin and sent pain signals into her brain.

She looked up and realized, just then, that she recognized where she was.

_I'm back._

Back in her cell.

Julie lay back down onto her side and tucked her legs into her torso, wrapping her arms around them. She faced the wall opposite where the door into the cell was.

_I hate it here._

_I want to go home._

She closed her eyes as memories started flooding back into her mind without her bidding. She remembered why she'd bitten her hands. Everything she experienced during all those hours of sheer terror inundated her awareness. All the faces, all the voices, all the pain, all the humiliation, the sense of betrayal and, worst of all, total violation… everything was coming alive for her again.

Julie stifled a painful sob that erupted in her chest. She tried to force everything filling her mind out, purging it from her awareness. But all this did was make her see her comrades – every single one – in her mind's eye.

And as she saw each face, her heart started beating faster and faster, and her fear and anger started to grow.

_Why did they leave me?_

She swallowed hard, thinking about this question she had asked herself, and remembered the night she, Elias, Mark, Donovan and Pascal went to Eleanor Dupres' house to make a counterfeit copy of Eleanor's special Visitor pass.

Her own words echoed in her head now: "We can't risk everything for just one person, no matter who it is."

Her cheeks were soaked now with hot tears, the irony of what she had told the others that night both haunting and taunting her.

_They left me behind. That's why I'm hurting so, so much._

_NO._

_**NO**__._

She pushed those thoughts out of her mind through sheer force of will. In their place came another memory.

She was driving a truck away from the loading area of the medical supply warehouse where she and her comrades stole some scientific equipment.

She saw Ben in the rear-view mirror, running away from the truck, pursued by Visitor Shock Troopers. He was drawing them away from the truck so it could escape.

She heard Brad's angry and frustrated admonitions when she stopped the truck a few blocks away, even as she jumped out and got into her Volkswagen.

She felt the utter desperation and the guilt for leaving Ben behind, and hoping that she could find him in time.

She saw Ben running down an angled ramp of a multi-story parking structure, still being pursued by Shock Troopers.

She saw him get hit by an electric blue packet of energy in the chest.

She saw him fall twenty-some feet onto the ground.

She saw him, broken and bloodied, in her car's front passenger seat.

She heard Ben's labored, hoarse attempts to breathe in those final moments, then the final gasp escape from his lips.

She watched him die.

And she thought, _I left him, and he died because I did._

_I left him._

_He died because I did._

The memory of Ben dying, and the words that felt like an irrefutable truth that sprung forth as she lay there crying, tortured Julie until she finally fell asleep.


	28. Chapter 27 - The Ball Starts to Roll

**CHAPTER 27**

Martin opened his eyes, roused from his slumber by the quiet chime emitted by his communicator. As a soldier in the Leader's army who had seen some battlefield experience, he was not particularly bothered by sudden unexpected interruptions to his sleep. But it had been just over thirteen years since his last time in a hot warzone, so this awakening was a little jarring.

He sat up and reached for his communicator, which was on top of the desk next to his bed. Its small display screen indicated who his caller was.

_Bruce._

He pressed a button, and a scrambled text message resolved into coherence. Encrypting audio communications on the Mother Ship was much more difficult than text messages, so he and the Fifth Column adopted this technique for real-time remote communications amongst themselves.

"Diana to resume Parrish's conversion in twenty minutes. Serums injected, Parrish brought to conversion chamber. Diana en route," said Bruce's message.

Martin composed a reply, remembering to encrypt the message back to Bruce.

"Acknowledged. Will be ready. You know the plan. Will deploy and execute upon receiving your signal."

He sent the reply, then composed another encrypted message, this time to both Barbara and Lorraine.

"It is time. I will meet you at the designated station in thirty minutes."

Martin sighed, then looked at the chronometer on his desk.

_0221 hours. _

_A bit obscene to resume the conversion process at such an hour. But I suppose that is part of the strategy._

His communicator chimed again, indicating that it had received two new messages.

Lorraine and Barbara had sent identical replies: "Acknowledged."

Martin sighed, then rose to his feet. He walked to his washroom and prepared himself, putting on his synth-skin mask and his contact lenses with great care before donning a fresh uniform. He fixed his hair last, then grabbed his boots and put them on.

_This is our only chance_, Martin thought as he stepped out of his quarters, heading for his rendezvous with Lorraine and Barbara.

_We are risking so much._

_But if this does not work…_

Martin didn't want to finish the thought as the implications weighed down his soul.


	29. Chapter 28 - Nightmare or Premonition

**CHAPTER 28**

Mike Donovan is dreaming.

It's one of _those_ dreams. You know the type. They make you sweat like you were in a sauna, even if it's actually quite cool where you are. It's one of those dreams where your heart is doing its best to mimic a Lars Ulrich double bass drum part, back when Metallica's material went a hundred miles an hour, and you wish you could just wake up to leave the dream behind.

But he can't.

Instead he just moans in his sleep, watching the scene play out before his mind's eye.

He's in a hallway bathed in white fluorescent light, a Visitor sidearm in his right hand. His back is pressed hard to the wall, and he is watching a group of people dressed in fine evening wear rush past him into an inactive elevator shaft. A ladder to the roof of the hospital is set up inside, and one by one everybody is taking turns going up.

Is this a memory, or is it something his mind had conjured up?

_This is our getaway_, Donovan thinks to himself, recognizing this as the time when he and his fellow rebels were escaping from the lobby of the Los Angeles Medical Center.

_This was just a couple of weeks ago._

As the last few rebels ran past him, he hears the voice of a man on the verge of panic. "C'mon, c'mon, hurry up, will ya?" says this man to the rebels going into the elevator shaft and up the ladder. Donovan looks at him and recognizes him right away. _Fred King._

Donovan looks up towards a petite blonde woman dressed in an elegant white evening gown. Like him, she has a Visitor sidearm in her right hand, but she also has a Heckler and Koch VP9 pistol in her left. She has taken position just inside a set of double doors the separated the Intensive Care Unit from the hallway.

_Julie._

"Let's go!" he calls out to her, even as he moves toward the elevator shaft.

But he hesitates when he sees from a corner of his eyes flashes of red and black and hears the thunder of rushing boots coming down the hall outside where Julie is. His eyes go wide.

_Shock Troopers!_

Donovan watches as she presses herself against the wall, getting a little bit of cover behind one of the doors, and starts firing her Visitor weapon at the alien soldiers rushing towards them.

"Shut it!" she screams.

"Come on!" Fred says.

"Julie! Let's go!" Donovan yells.

"Shut it!" Julie screams again.

Donovan grabs King by the shoulders, tosses him into the elevator shaft, and shuts the twin doors. He then rushes to a corner where two hallways meet, then, like Julie, fires toward the Visitor Shock Troopers massing outside the ICU.

Sparks and small tongues of flames lick out at Donovan as the alien soldiers' own volleys missed him by inches. "Julie!"

He looks up and sees the desperation and terror in her eyes as she looks back at him. "Go on! I'll cover you!" she screams at him.

Donovan lets loose a flurry of shots into the hallway, laying down some measure of suppressing fire. "There's no way I'm leaving you! Come on!"

Julie breaks from her cover, but as soon as she starts to run towards Donovan she gets hit.

"NO!" Donovan yells in horror as he watches her collapse onto the floor. He rushes toward her, but everything goes dark when he takes a hit himself.

"Julie –" he says weakly before unconsciousness takes him completely.

When Donovan opens his eyes again it takes him a moment to recognize that he is on the Mother Ship, inside a small holding cell. He is on his back, lying on a thin cushion, when he notices a couple of people standing over him.

The first one he sees is a Visitor soldier, whose weapon is pointed squarely at his face. Donovan looks past the weapon's muzzle into the soldier's face, except he cannot see it because of the black battle mask hiding the soldier's features.

Just behind the soldier stands Diana. She has a small smile on her lips. "How good of you to rejoin the living, Mr. Donovan," she says. Donovan just glowers at her as he starts to sit up.

"You and Miss Parrish have given us a lot of trouble," she says. "Your interference at the medical center, in particular, was quite audacious, and it might have endangered my people's mission." Diana's smile grows. "However, despite all the inconvenience you and Miss Parrish have caused, we were still able to capture the two of you."

Donovan looks around. "Where is Julie? Is she okay?"

"Ah," Diana says. "So eager to see your friend. How touching." She walks to the door, which opens at her approach.  
"Come on in."

Donovan's eyes widen when he sees Julie, dressed in a Visitor uniform, walk in. He sighs with relief. "I thought they'd killed you."

Julie looks at him, then at Diana. She stays silent.

"Are you alright?" Donovan asks Julie, but she doesn't react. She just continues to look at Diana, her face expressionless. Donovan looks at Diana. "What's wrong with her? What did you do to her?"

Diana's smile gets even bigger, then looks at Julie. "Ms. Parrish is – how shall I say – much better now, compared to how she was the last time you saw her." She turns to look at Donovan. "Do you have feelings for her, Mr. Donovan?"

Donovan looks at Julie, then back at Diana, but doesn't say a word.

"Your silence speaks volumes," Diana says. "She is a very beautiful creature, Mr. Donovan. I can certainly understand why you might have strong feelings for her." She waves a hand at Julie. "But did you know her beauty is more than just skin-deep?"

Diana nods slightly, and Julie reaches out a hand to her face. Her fingers dig into the side of her face, then pulls at the skin.

Donovan is horrified to see green-black scales reveal themselves beneath the skin Julie tears off from her own face. "It can't be –" he says. "It can't be!"

Julie finishes tearing off a section of her face, then fixes her gaze at Donovan.

He tries to look at her, but when he sees her left eye – not the usual blue-grey, but a red eyeball, yellow iris, and a vertical black pupil – he has to suppress an urge to vomit at the sight.

Donovan lunges at the soldier, grabs at his weapon, and somehow is able to wrest it away from the Visitor. He fires and hits the soldier, then swings the rifle towards Diana. But he doesn't fire.

Because Julie is pointing a Visitor sidearm at him.

Donovan notices she is holding the weapon with her left hand. He blinks, scarcely believing what he's seeing. But he keeps his weapon trained on Diana, who continues to give him her mocking smile.

"There is no reason to be confused, Mr. Donovan," Diana says, reaching out to touch Julie's shoulder. "Miss Parrish belongs to us; she is one of us now."

"No –" Donovan says, shaking his head. "Snap out of it, Julie. Snap out of it!"

"She is one of us now," Diana repeats, "and she will do whatever I tell her. Won't you, Julie?"

Donovan remains transfixed at Julie, who remains absolutely quiet and hasn't moved. She hasn't even changed her facial expression, her blank eyes staring unblinkingly at Donovan.

"Good-bye, Mr. Donovan," Diana says. "Kill him."

Donovan lets out a yell as he moves the Visitor rifle in his hands and his finger pulls on the trigger.

"NO!"

Donovan sat up on his cot, his breaths coming in hard and heavy quick succession. He blinked, and he didn't understand why everything was dark.

"Hey," said a voice in the darkness. "You alright, man?"

Donovan looked toward the source of the sound. "Elias," he said, "sorry I woke you up."

Elias Taylor sat up, and Donovan saw him run a hand through his hair. "You alright, man?" Elias asked again.

"Yeah," Donovan said, then sighed. "Just had another nightmare."

"About Sean? Or about Julie?"

Donovan grabbed his pillow and rubbed it against his chest and forehead, soaking up the sweat that had built up. He gathered his thoughts before answering Elias. "I wish I hadn't agreed with that plan Tyler, Martin, and I thought up."

Elias remained quiet for several long moments, then said, "It takes a hard man to come up with a hard plan. But it might be for Julie's own good, you know."

Donovan lay back down. "Do you really believe that?"

And when Elias didn't say anything, Donovan got his answer.


End file.
